In anticipation of the Thaw: unpublished article by Boris Yampolsky

Abstract

This is a publication of the article “A Discussion of the Artistic Documentary” by writer, journalist and screenwriter B. S. Yampolsky. This article, sent by him to the magazine “Art of Cinema” in 1953, was not published and has been preserved in the archives of the editorial office. The occasion for writing the article was the release of R. L. Carmen’s film “The Tale of the Caspian Oilmen”. However, Yampolsky contrasts the merits of this film with the fundamental problems of Soviet documentary filmmaking. The author sharply criticizes the flattening and embellishment of reality in late Stalinist documentary cinema. Yampolsky’s critical judgments extend wider, touching upon the fundamental problems of socialist realism. His article represents one of the earliest attempts to revise the aesthetic legacy of Stalinism in the public sphere. Due to the editorial policy of those years, the text did not reach the readers. Today, its publication allows us to shed new light on the early processes of transformation of Soviet cinematographic and, more broadly, artistic discourse in the mid-1950s.