Strawberry

Sunday Sorbet Routine

"(...) during the Great Terror the nature and tone of the early purges significantly changed with arrests drastically increasing in number. In the cinema industry the key difference now was that the frequently ineffectual nature of earlier purges was replaced by a ruthless efficiency, taking violence and intimidation to new levels. Between 1936 and 1938, many key administrative figures in Soviet cinema were arrested and executed. The first major arrests took place in March 1936. (...) Most of these individuals were exiled to labour camps, (...) These individuals may have been saved from execution by the simple fact that they were sentenced before the Great Terror was in full swing. (...) Those administrators arrested between 1937–1938 were not so fortunate. Among them were the head of the industry Boris Shumiatsky and his assistants, including his former deputy, Yakov Chuzhin, and the man who replaced him Vasili Zhilin, as well as Vladimir Usievich, Konstantin Yukov, the aforementioned Albert Slivkin and Veniamin Bruk, who were all executed on grounds ranging from terrorism to spying. On the whole, administrators were far more heavily affected by the terror than artistic personnel. A secret report on the cinema administration, at the time of Shumiatsky’s arrest suggested that out of the 453 individuals working at GUK, 154 people had politically unreliable backgrounds or affiliations and emanated from one of the ‘exploitative’ classes. Notably, 61 of these administrators had travelled abroad. In 1938, following the arrest of Shumiatsky and his colleagues, the cinema administration was hit by a further series of arrests and executions. In a similar manner to the earlier purges, most of those arrested were heads or deputy heads of departments. Among them were Yevgeni Satel, the manager of Goskinoprokat, the division responsible for distribution; Vladimir Stepanov, the head of the technical department for feature film production; Fyodor Sokolov, a senior inspector for the cinefication administration; Alexander Kucherovsky, a consultant for the building sector and Mikhail Breslavsky, the deputy director of that sector, as well as Alexander Kadysh and Matvei Shkolnik, the heads of the sectors for film viewing in two separate departments. In addition, the head of the department for the production of educational-technical films, Grigori Pechalin-Perez, was arrested and shot. No department escaped the terror. The heads of the financial department M.A. Kagan and Rafail Antikol were repressed, as was the senior economist Vasili Khomutov. Soiuzintorgkino was targeted due to suspicions of foreign connections established while films and film materials were being imported and exported which led to the arrest of the body’s director Samuil Ginsburg who was of Polish extraction. The deputy of the building sector, a certain Okulov, was arrested after spending time abroad while a chief engineer of the cinema mechanical industry, by the name of Petrov, was also under suspicion due to his foreign ties. One of the leading administrators in the American-inspired Cine City project, Yuli Piatigorsky, was accused of spying and executed. Arrests were also made within the industry itself especially in the studios. A similar trend prevailed in all the studios as a series of departmental heads were arrested. At Mosfilm the former director Boris Babitsky and the new director Elena Sokolovskaia, were both arrested and executed as were the heads of the department of colour cinema, the planning department and the sets and decorations department. The director of Lenfilm, Yakov Smirnov and his assistants, Leonti Katsnelson, Natan Grinfeld, as well as the artistic director of Lenfilm, Adrian Piotrovsky and the technical director, Vasili Mikhailyk were arrested. Solomon Orelovich, the director of the Kiev studio Ukrainfilm, suffered the same fate, as did leaders from other key bodies including the Odessa and Armenian studios. In Azerbaijan the head of the cinema administration, Gulam Sultanov, was accused of giving jobs to family and class enemies in the administration and at the studio Azerkino. He was arrested and executed. In Georgia, the head of the cinema industry, Amvrosi Titberidze was arrested and shot. The head of Sibtekhfilm, Mikhail Chertulov, was arrested as was his predecessor, Mikhail Mordokhovich. Former studio directors and leading script consultants at all studios were arrested and the purges affected other personnel, including editors, sound technicians, engineers, pyrotechnic experts, accountants, drivers and firemen. Furthermore, the purges, as they had in earlier years, extended beyond the administration and the studios. (...)" » Jamie Miller: 𝘚𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘵 𝘊𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘢. 𝘗𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘶𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘯 {2010}