Telling the People\u27s Truth: Soviet Fairy Tale Film and the Construction of a National Bolshevik Film Genre

This study analyzes the Soviet fairy tale film genre as an expression of the ideological turn in Soviet mass culture and education from the proletarian internationalism of the 1920s to the Russo-centric statism of the Stalin period (1930s - early 1950s). The appearance of fairy tale films marks the rehabilitation of Russian folk tradition, which took place in the course of a renewed emphasis on the positive role of the Russian people and their leaders in history. By articulating contemporary cultural values and ideology in the guise of timeless folk tradition, the fairy tale film tended to legitimize and naturalize those values. By examining a representative fairy tale film from the 1930s and another from the 1960s, this study aims to show how the Soviet fairy tale film proved flexible enough to survive the transition from Stalinism to the Thaw while proving capable of articulating changing cultural values