Soviet Films and Changes of Historical Consciousness of the Early Thaw Period

This study examines the social aspects of the early "Thaw" period through three important war films, Cranes are flying, The Ballad of a soldier, and Ivan's Childhood, making a comparison with Tscapayev, the typical stalinist war film. The three films mirrored the main currents of the early 1960' s in that they accentuated human nature of the heroes which, in fact, had been suppressed under ideal soviet virtue. The forced heroism of the stalinist past was rejected and World War II was no more conceived as the stage of superhuman patriots. The heroine of Cranes was just a poor victim of destiny of the war period, and the young soldier of The Ballad, far from being valiant, was rather a common fellow with a warm heart. The boy hero of Ivan's Childhood was represented as a monster deprived of tender childhood. These films, like other works of art genres of the era, helped people reorganizing the collective memory of the past. These movements, however, did not result in decisive changes of the society. They encountered severe reaction after the fall of Khrushchev, and soviet films were again under the pressure of the authorities. But those experiences of the first "Thaw" period were not totally forgotten; they were preserved, one may say, to prepare another future debacle