THE DREAM OF THE DIAMOND CITY: POST-WAR CINEMA REPRESENTATION OF THE URALS

Abstract

The paper attempts to show how a rapidly changing Soviet reality reflected in the life orientations, priorities and values of a man of the Stalin era. On the one hand, the paper analyzes how the Stalinist socialist industrialization of the Urals, which became its “second discovery”, changed the socio-cultural image of the region. On the other hand, the paper shows how the idea of transformation of regional life by the “new Soviet man” materialized in the Urals cinema. The paper also shows how materialization of that idea helped to achieve an ephemeral goal of building a brighter socialist future. As a source of revealing of significant ideas and values that existed in the Stalinist society, the author used "The Diamonds" movie created by the Sverdlovsk film studio in the early post-war years. On-screen images, which absorbed not only visual but also verbal symbols and signs of the past, are the keys to deciphering cultural code of the Soviet era. Success of the Soviet industrialization rooted in the wealth of the bowels of the earth, and thus directly depended on the people who could find those resources and put them at the service of humanity. Turn of filmmakers to the figure of the geologist and to the hierarchy of “types” among the representatives of the profession, claimed through a labor dispute, is explained in the paper as an example of formation of the “needed” ideas in mass consciousness. The paper shows that the image of the geologist, adjusted and polished on screen in accordance with the spirit of the time, was the ideal life model. Focused on it, people had an opportunity to “remake” themselves in concordance with the "ideal model".