This work provides a comprehensive documentary history of Russian and Soviet cinema. It provokes a major reassessment of the conventional Western understanding of Soviet cinema. Based on extensive research and in original translation, the documents selected illustrate both the aesthetic and political development of Russian and Soviet cinema, from its beginnings as a fairground novelty in 1896 to its emergence as a mass medium of entertainment and propaganda on the eve of World War II.

Stalinism and Soviet Cinema marks an attempt to confront systematically the role and influence of Stalin and Stalinism in the history and development of Soviet cinema. It provides comprehensive coverage of the antecendents, role and consequences of Stalinism and Soviet cinema, by exploring questions such as how Stalinism emerged, what the relationship was between the political leadership, the cinema administrators, the film-makers and their films and audiences, and how Soviet cinema is coming to terms with the disintegration of both structures and mythology.

This is the first collection to be inspired and informed by the new films and archival material that glasnost and perestroika have revealed, and the new methodological approaches that are developing in tandem. Film critics and historians from Britain, America, France and the USSR attempt the vital task of scrutinising Soviet film, and re-examining the Cold War assumptions of traditional historiography.
Whereas most books on Soviet giants have glorified the directorial giants of the golden age' of the 1920s, Inside the Film Factory also recognises the achievements of popular cinema...