Annotation of the results obtained in 2023
In accordance with the announced annual plan, in January–December 2023, work continued on research, processing, interdisciplinary analysis and introduction into humanitarian circulation of theoretical and practical developments of scientists, cinematographers, photographers of the early Soviet period in terms of constructing a Cinema-Atlas of the Soviet Union in the context of parallel transformations in science, culture and ideology of the 1920s-1930s. 1. Continued research activities in the funds of state and regional archives and museums of Russia (MAE RAS, the State Archive of the Arkhangelsk Region, the State Archive of the Omsk Region, the State Central Museum of Cinema, Gosfilmofond of the Russian Federation, the State Museum of the History of the Far East, the State Archive of Dagestan, the National Museum of the Chechen Republic, the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents, the Central State Archive literature and art), studies were conducted in the film and photo libraries of foreign countries (Belarus, China, Uzbekistan), including online resources; 2. The ongoing complex work on the locations of the creation of films of the project «Cinema-Atlas of the USSR» – conducting expedition interviews, studying private archives of descendants of participants of scientific campaigns and filming – covered the following territories: the Middle Urals, Kamchatka Region, Primorsky Region, Sakhalin Region, Arkhangelsk Region, the Republic of Dagestan, the Chechen Republic; 3. The thematic block «Theories and practices of Soviet visual ethnography» was formed in the journal «Ethnography» (included in the registers of SCOPUS, WoS, RSCI) with the articles of the project participants; 4. Following the results of the third year of work and systematization of the received materials, a series of (15) scientific articles was published (icluding 6 SCOPUS/Web of Science) in the leading peer-reviewed journals of the humanities on the subject of research, as well as manuscripts (4) have been prepared for the prospect of their registration in the form of a general thematic scientific monograph; 5. A round table «Cinema-Atlas of the USSR»: the experience of positioning a multi-ethnic state» was held within the framework of the XV Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia (MAE «Kunstkamera» of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, June 26-29, 2023, St. Petersburg); 6. A part of the content was prepared for the Internet channel and multimedia application «Cinema-Atlas of the USSR» (films, newsreels, photo documents, texts dedicated to the visualization of images of the regions of the Soviet Union); 7. The results of the project were presented at Russian and international scientific conferences and film festivals (18), including the Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia (XV CAER); 8. Video editing of presentation audio-visual works (videos, films) from the collected project materials (films, newsreels, photographs, text publications, archival manuscripts, captions, etc.) was carried out; 9. The project content was uploaded to the network, the launch and presentation of a special playlist «Cinema-Atlas of the USSR» on the thematic Internet-Channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAjm0CyI7KX_6TVuX9JUxHRzFeUeaX67m 10. The range of works performed was summed up, options for theoretical and practical application of the project materials were outlined, and possible prospects for continuing studies of visual history and ethnography in Russia were formulated. An interdisciplinary analysis of archival visual and textual documents, periodical press materials, and contemporary testimonies convincingly showed that the series of the great Soviet Cinema-Atlas, created according to a similar scenario matrix, primarily reflected changes in the course of socialist construction in the 1920s and 1930s, and concentrated the attention of society (inside and outside the USSR) on progressive phenomena which took place during the Sovietization of the multinational and diverse Soviet community. However, in addition to the implementation of political state tasks, the creation of a visual chronicle of the country has become a significant program that brought together prominent figures of science and cinema in the activity, largely thanks to which an original direction of ethno-geographical cinema was formed in the domestic environment, expressed in a palette of theoretical and practical experiences that are in demand in a wide range of modern research and creative practices. The specific scientific results of the second year of project research have been published in 15 articles in scientific publications indexed in the international databases WoS and Scopus, included in the RSCI and the list of the Higher Attestation Commission. The materials of the project were presented in 18 reports and presentations by the project participants at international and All-Russian scientific forums and film festivals, including the thematic round table "Cinema-Atlas of the USSR: the experience of positioning a multi-ethnic state", organized by the project participants within the framework of the XV Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia in St. Petersburg.

 

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Annotation of the results obtained in 2021
The start of the project "Cinema Atlas of the USSR: Experience in Positioning a Multinational State" inspired a comprehensive collection and analysis of visual materials, opening up new perspectives for considering film and photo documents as sources for studying various aspects of socio-cultural transformations in the ethnically heterogeneous and multi-structured space of the Soviet Union in the 1920s – 1930s, and allowing to consider the counter-motives of scientists in the development of visual resources for scientific purposes, and filmmakers - in the creation of films on ethnographic materials. In line with the project hypothesis about the soil nature of the direction of ethnographic cinema in Russia / USSR, such a thematic focusing made it possible to discover hitherto unknown experiences in the history of Russian visual ethnography / anthropology as a (sub) discipline. The main directions of the first year of work on the project were "Experiments of Scientists", "Experiments of Cinematographers" and "Joint Experiments of Researchers and Directors within the framework of the" Cinema Atlas of the USSR "project. 1) Experiments of scientists. The scientific group of the project carried out research on thematic archives of scientists in the funds of Russian museum and research institutions: the B.M. and Yu.M. Sokolovs in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art in Moscow (RGALI. F. 483), L.L. Kapitsa in the Russian Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg (REM-4903), V.G. Bogoraz in the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPbF ARAN. F. 250), materials about the scientific work of N.F. Yakovlev in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art in Moscow (RGALI, F. 2091). Cinema experiences expressed in theoretical developments ("Marxist Ethnofilma" by V.G.Bogoraz, "Cinema and Scientific Expeditions" by L.L. method "N.F. Sea "(1929) L. L. Kapitsa;" Kabardino-Balkaria to the 10th anniversary of October "(1927) A. N. Tersky), or with their consulting participation (" In Bryansk Polesie "(1931)," Storm of the North " (1931) In line with the study of scientists' approaches to the visualization of ethnicity in the period under study, special attention in the design work was paid to the expeditionary photo collections of the Kunstkamera (St. Petersburg), the St. Petersburg branch of the RAS Archive, the Russian Ethnographic Museum (funds of N. N. Volkova, Z. P. Malinovskaya, N.S. Rozova) Studied ethnographic photo collections They are quite indicative for comparison - they clearly demonstrate how the approach to photography of traditional culture has changed over the course of one decade, and how politics has formatted the approaches of researchers: from feeding the rudiments of ethnographic / regional traditions to relaying images of the construction of a Soviet sociocultural community on the map of the Union. 2) The experiences of filmmakers. Work was carried out to analyze the materials of films about Sovietization of the original regions of the USSR: Eastern Siberia and the Far East, the North and South Caucasus, Central Asia and the Northern Black Sea region. These sources made it possible to peer at the ethnopolitical, ethno-confessional, colonization, gender and other topical for the period under study, processes that took place on the ground (“Jews on Earth” by AM Rooma (1927), “Roof of the World” (1928) A. Erofeeva, Country of Nakhcho "(1930) N. A. Lebedeva," Kamchatka by N. D. Konstantinov (1928), "Descendant of Genghis Khan" (1928), "Baikal (along the western Baikal region to Mongolia)" (1928), “Around Buryat-Mongolia” (1929), as well as “Kalmyks” (1927) and “Young Republic (Kalmyk ASSR)” (1935) .Special attention in the course of design research was devoted to the study of the phenomenon of “anti-religious film” in the USSR, which pursued the goal the creation of an "atlas of confessions" in the Land of the Soviets Based on the materials of the most illustrative documentary films "Sectarians" (1930) by V. Korolevich and "At the Sectarians" (1930) by AN Tersky, the history of the formation of this special segment in the direction of educational cinema about peoples and cultures of the 1920s – 1930s. In addition, during the reporting period, extensive work was done to study materials from Soviet periodicals concerning the technical and creative nuances of the development of scientific cinematography in the USSR as a type of film industry. The corpus of Soviet ethno-geographical films studied during the work on the project demonstrates an impressive palette of author's styles and methods of film production: "Propaganda Cinema" by A.M. Rooma, "An anti-religious film" by V. Korolevich, "Kinoreportazh" by B.R. Neublitsky, "Ethnographic Film" by A.N. Tersky and others) and allows arguing the project hypothesis about the existence of a full-fledged direction of ethnographic cinema in the USSR in the 1920s – 1930s. 3) The project "Cinema Atlas of the USSR" as the quintessence of scientific and cinematic developments. During the reporting period, specially-directed studies of documents on the creation of films "Kinoatlas of the USSR" were carried out in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art (Moscow): the funds of the film studios "Sovkino", "Vostokkino", "Mezhrabpomfilm", "Kino-Siberia", " Gosvoenkino "for the 1920s – 1930s. (RGALI. F. 645). The newly collected data made it possible to develop and additionally substantiate the project research that the chain of cultural and ideological foundations of the "atlas" project intertwined Marxist doctrine, the ideas of avant-garde cinema, as well as the intentions of ethnoscience itself. It was verified that initially (in the mid-1920s) the project of the Soviet "Kinoatlas" was conceived as a montage of newsreel materials of local history and production content that already existed at that time. However, already at the turn of the 1920s – 1930s. the project was reformatted in terms of the need for additional filming of new materials, first of all, reflecting the development of Soviet construction. Film sketches of local lore gave their place on the screen to full-length works - the so-called "cultural films", which combined an art form with documentary, popular science, and often propaganda content. During the reporting period, attention was drawn to such a significant aspect of the USSR Cinema Atlas project as “exporting the revolution” abroad and popularizing the ideas of the Communist International through the cinema screen. On the one hand, the distribution of Soviet film correspondents to various parts of the Union and others loyal to the Soviet system of the country made it possible to collect and operate a range of news materials related to the peculiarities of socialist construction in various parts of the world. On the other hand, films from the USSR, being a profitable commodity that were successfully distributed by Soviet trade missions in various parts of the world, allowed them to tell outside their "film truth" about the progressiveness of the socialist path of development. It is no coincidence that the transcripts of the discussion of the "cinema atlas" reveal proposals to expand the "cinema atlas of the USSR" to the scale of the "cinema atlas of the world" in terms of film mapping of the expanding zone of influence of the Soviet Union. According to the project plans, the preparation of content (materials on the Far East and Eastern Siberia) for the projected Internet channel and multimedia application has also started. The general design of the preparatory application will echo the on-screen map of the USSR, from the frames of which most ethno-geographical films of the early Soviet period began, and make it possible to activate visual materials on this "movie map" depending on the region selected by the user. The scientific results of the first year of design research were published in 7 articles in scientific journals, indexed in the international databases WoS and Scopus, included in the RSCI and the list of the Higher Attestation Commission. The materials of the work on the project were presented in 16 reports and presentations of the project participants at international and all-Russian scientific forums.

 

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Annotation of the results obtained in 2022
In the course of implementing the project tasks, in accordance with the declared annual plan, in January-December 2022, work continued on the search, processing, introduction into scientific circulation and interdisciplinary analysis of the theoretical and practical developments of scientists, filmmakers, photographers of the early Soviet period in terms of constructing images of territories and regional-ethnic communities of the Soviet Union. New visual sources were identified in Russian and foreign archives and museums. The main thematic lines of the research were: "Experiences of scientists", "Experiences of cinematographers and photographers" and "Joint experiments of researchers and directors in the framework of the project" Cinema Atlas of the USSR ". 1) Experiments of scientists. Research was continued on thematic archives of scientists in the repositories of Russian museum and research institutions: funds of V.K. Arseniev in the Society for the Study of the Amur Territory (OIAK. F. 14) and in the Khabarovsk Museum of Local Lore (KhKM. F. 53), materials by A.N. Tersky in the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents (RGAKFD. Fund of Film Documents. Item 1528), documents on the scientific work of N.F. Yakovlev in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow (RGALI. Fund 2091). Film experiences are analyzed, expressed in theoretical developments (“Visual Ethnography” by V.K. Arsenyev, “Anti-Religious Film” by A.N. Tersky, “Cinema as a Form of Scientific Knowledge” by N.F. Yakovlev), as well as in practical film projects that were carried out either directly by scientists (“At the sectarians” by A.N. Tersky (1930), or with their consulting participation (“Forest People” (1928), “Through the wilds of the Ussuri Territory” (1928), “Unknown Land” (1931). at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, these initiatives had common and specific features in terms of theoretical understanding and practical testing of the forms of interaction between ethnography and cinema.In all approaches, in different variations, the need was emphasized to establish a systemic connection between scientific and cinematographic institutions of the USSR and to search for parity ethnography and cinematography in the format of a popular science film.At the same time, each of these experiences has also made an original contribution to the development of o participated in expeditionary cinematographic work, initiated scientific research in Soviet cinema on topical issues of representation of ethnic and religious communities on the screen in the USSR, using psychology approaches (reflexology), and as a result developed a method of “parallel filming” of a moviegoer that corresponded to the ideological context of the early Soviet period . The “screening” of a scientific monograph in documentary films is the main novelty of the method used by V.K. Arsenyev while working with the Sovkino group on the ethno-films Forest People and Through the Wilds of the Ussuri Territory in 1928. And one of the main features of N.F. Yakovlev was the perception of cinema not as an external technology for use in existing research traditions, but as a completely new scientific method - a special "language" of scientific knowledge, capable of broadcasting research material in volume - the action itself and its figurative-emotional context, difficult to convey in a scientific text. 2) Experiences of cinematographers. Thematic surveys were carried out covering the activities of film directors and photo chroniclers of the 1920s–1930s. in the direction of visualization of ethnicity and regional specificity of the regions of the USSR. In particular, work was carried out to analyze the materials of films about the Sovietization of the original regions of the USSR: the Far East and the Middle Urals, Western and Eastern Siberia, the North and South Caucasus, Central Asia and Buryatia, etc. ethno-political, ethno-confessional, gender and related topical processes for the period under study that took place on the ground. The development of the production of Soviet ethno-geographical films took place at the turn of the 1920s–1930s, and was associated with the appearance of a series of feature films directed by directors (A.I. Bek-Nazarov, V.A. Erofeev, N.K. Konstantinov, A. N. Terskoy and others), while many of the films produced were created in collaboration with scientific consultants (V.K. Arseniev, V.A. Sytin, N.F. Yakovlev and others). Those documentary pictures and accompanying materials that characterize the process of their creation open to researchers not only informational pictures of the evolution of certain cultural forms under socialism, but also the corresponding “off-screen” context. The current retrospective study of film images of the regions proved that, on the one hand, cinema during the formation of Soviet power really acted as the most important information and propaganda tool to accompany state programs for the colonization of the country's territories. On the other hand, it strengthened the arguments that correspond to the hypothesis of the project that the cinema was used by the party leadership as a resource of the “cultural revolution”, supporting the projects of the Soviet modernization of the life and customs of the population of remote corners of the country. Revealing the “harmful” remnants of the pre-Soviet period in films of the game and non-game direction, the political projects of the Bolsheviks, framed in movie propaganda, were aimed, in particular, at eliminating folk beliefs, religion as a social institution and religious fanaticism, traditional norms of behavior, especially in matters of gender stratification societies in the Muslim territories of the Soviet Union. 3) The project "Kinoatlas of the USSR" as the quintessence of scientific and cinematographic developments. During the reporting period, research was continued on the USSR Cinema Atlas in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (Moscow): funds of the Sovkino, Vostokkino, Mezhrabpomfilm, Kino-Sibir, Gosvoenkino film studios for the 1920s–1930s years, as well as in the fund of film documents of the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents (Krasnogorsk, Moscow Region), and in the library fund of periodicals of the Central Bureau of Local Lore (TsBK). It was noted that on the anniversary of the 10th anniversary of October, the country’s demand for the embodiment of the images of the revolution in “large forms” was updated - the first round anniversary of the government demanded from the Bolshevik Party, on the one hand, convincing reporting for the past period, on the other hand, high-profile promising projects . In the cinema, such a “big Soviet project” was just the “Kinoatlas of the USSR”, officially launched by order of the Central Executive Committee. Of course, the Kinoatlas project in the form in which it arose at the turn of the 1920s–1930s - a product of exclusively Soviet realities, expressing the interweaving of the positions of ideology, science and art of the designated period. Namely, the nationalization of the film industry, the unification of disparate film resources around several basic organizations, the transition to a planned economy and departmental unification of the efforts of specialists in various fields of activity - became the sum of the factors that determined its birth as an ideological tool for use on the cultural front of Soviet construction. According to the announced plans, the preparation of content for the projected Internet channel and multimedia application was also continued. The overall design of the upcoming application will echo the on-screen map of the USSR, with frames from which most of the ethno-geographical films of the early Soviet period began, and will enable the activation of visual materials on this “movie map” depending on the region selected by the user. Specific scientific results of the second year of project research were published in 15 articles in scientific publications indexed in the international databases WoS and Scopus, included in the RSCI and the VAK list, including the organization of the thematic block "Visual Ethnography" in the journal "Ethnography" (included in the international database SCOPUS) . Materials of the project work were presented in 26 reports and presentations of the project participants at international and all-Russian scientific forums and film festivals.

 

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