Indian cinema in the Soviet Union/ Russia
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Briefly
Indian films with a Soviet connection
Adrija Roychowdhury, April 26, 2023: The Indian Express
An important sub-plot running through the recent Amazon Prime series, ‘Jubilee’, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, is the deep interest that the erstwhile Soviet Union had in the Indian film industry in the years soon after India’s independence.
In the early 1950s, films such as Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955) became some of the highest-grossing productions in Russia while Raj Kapoor became a sensation there. It was not uncommon for large crowds to mob stars such as Kapoor, Nargis, Amitabh Bachchan, Rekha and Mithun Chakraborty during their visits to the USSR. Film critic Alexander Lipkov in an article in 1994 recounts how a cordon of militiamen once had to rescue Rishi Kapoor from a mob of young autograph hunters.
The beginning of the popularity of Indian cinema in the Soviet Union is often traced to the first festival of Indian films held in 1954 in Moscow and several other Soviet cities. The festival is known to have been a watershed moment in the cultural exchanges between India and the Soviet Union. Films shown at the festival included Awaara, Do Bigha Zamin, Aandhiyan and Rahi, were about social justice, rural impoverishment and other such issues emblematic of a newly independent India, and resonated with the communist philosophy governing the Soviet Union.
Author and professor of East European Studies, Sudha Rajagopalan in her book, ‘Indian films in Soviet Cinemas’ (2008), writes about the grand reception that the 1954 film festival got in Russia. “The films attracted a large viewer turnout, and recollections of the time often refer to long queues, the difficulty of getting tickets and the overcrowded halls.”
Rajagopalan cites newspaper reports of the time that suggest around a million viewers attended the shows in the first four days of the festival. Heated discussions followed the screening of almost all the films, which were also well-received by film critics in the Soviet Union.
Russia’s celebration of Indian films at the 1954 festival happened in the middle of its Cold War with the West that started after the Second World War. Moscow made efforts to warm up to a non-aligned India at that time.
Soviet politics and Indian films
Under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet state showed a general mistrust towards independent India. There was an unwillingness to engage with what the Stalinists saw as a bourgeois regime of India’s Congress party. Things, however, began to change from the early 1950s. The then Indian ambassador V K Krishna Menon was received by Stalin twice during the last years of his regime, and in general the relationship between the two countries began to thaw.
Soviet cultural organisations were already in regular contact with the leftist organisations of pre and post-colonial India, which were deeply inspired by the socialist revolutionary spirit ingrained in Soviet politics. In the early 1950s, the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations or VOKS demonstrated a keen interest in Indian cinema and even began providing technical equipment to Indian film productions along with manuals on filmmaking.
As a consequence of this fresh curiosity about Indian films, Russian director Vsevolod Pudovkin and actor Nikolai Cherkasov visited India in early 1951.
Author and professor of film studies, Masha Salazkina, in her article, ‘Soviet-Indian coproductions: Alibaba as Political Allegory’, states that “this trip resulted in the first Indian-Soviet exchange of films, which is how Russian audiences came to catch their first glimpse of Indian film culture”.
But the real interest in Indian films in the Soviet Union emerged only after Stalin’s death in 1953. This was the time when Nehru’s stance on non-alignment came to be favoured by Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev, leading to a sort of quasi-alignment between the two countries until the end of the Soviet era in the late 1980s. This relationship was further strengthened by America’s tilt towards Pakistan and China.
With Khrushchev delivering his famous ‘de-Stalinisation’ speech in 1956, the party officially distanced itself from the excesses of the Stalinist regime. “The Soviet regime under Khrushchev and later Brezhnev rejected Stalinist-style purges and arbitrary arrests as a form of control,” writes Rajagopalan. “Instead, they formulated policies to satisfy popular needs as a way to regain public confidence and to counter anti-Soviet Cold War rhetoric that questioned the endurance of the socialist state.”
This was accompanied by the state’s interference in people’s everyday lives and consumption patterns. While on the one hand better services and material comforts were made available, on the other hand, newspapers and magazines of the time advised people to consume the new perfumes, clothes, cosmetics and the likes with restraint and modesty. Such state-sponsored intervention was thought to be necessary to keep up with the socialist spirit of the Soviet state. As Rajagopalan notes, it was in this period of new cultural freedoms accompanied by state regulation that the Soviet Union first started importing Indian films.
Import and collaboration with Indian films
In the 1940s itself, the film import-export department in the Soviet Union, Soveksportfil’m, under the aegis of the state committee for cinematography, Goskino, started setting up regional offices across the world. In India the regional office was set up in 1946 in Bombay, and in 1978 in Madras and Calcutta. The first Indian film imported by Soveksportfil’m was the Hindi film Dharti Ke Lal in 1949. This was followed by Nemai Ghosh’s Chinnamul in 1951. The close documentation of hunger and suffering in Chinnamul is known to have moved the audiences. “Naturally such levels of honesty were impossible for Soviet cinematographers in those years and it was appreciated by few,” writes Lipkov in his article. In the consequent years, the department sent copious amounts of reports on almost every Hindi film running in Bombay theatres.
The Soviet Union’s keenness in Indian films took on a whole new meaning after the 1954 film festival where the films were well-received both by the masses and by the critics. The huge potential of Indian films in sealing diplomatic ties became immediately clear. Rajagopalan notes how Indian film stars present at the event such as Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Nirupa Roy and K A Abbas among others visited historic Soviet sites. They also visited the Soviet Institute of Cinematography (the first institute of film studies in the world) where they spent time talking to directors, instructors and students. Everywhere, the stars were greeted with much enthusiasm. In one of the press conferences, Raj Kapoor had compared the reception of Indian cinema in the Soviet Union to his visit to the United States where he said Indian films were marginalised.
The impact the film festival had on diplomatic ties between the two countries is best understood from the grand reception that Nehru got during his visit to the Soviet Union the following year.
As leisure came to be liberalised in the post-Stalinist era, it became imperative to revive movie-going among the Soviet people. However, there were few movies being produced domestically to satiate their appetite, making it necessary to import more and more films from foreign countries to fill up the theatres.
The import of films, however, was to be carried out with caution, ensuring that it served the Soviet ideology. In 1965, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (TsK KPSS) granted authority to Goskino and Soveksportfil’m to select films to import from abroad, but only after they followed specified guidelines. “Goskino was to acquaint viewers with the best works of ‘progressive’ film makers abroad and not allow ‘bourgeois propaganda’ on Soviet screens,” writes Rajagopalan adding that the TsK KPSS was to keep a close watch over the process.
The plan was to import eight to ten films from India annually. Representatives of Soveksportfil’m previewed all local films before sending some of them to Moscow for final approval. The selection committee consisted of cinematographers, writers, directors, journalists and members of the TsK KPSS. The artistic worth and ideological leanings of the films were key determining factors in selecting them. Apart from that mutual relationships with the film distribution firms were also a factor. Rajagopalan notes how while films from several countries were considered in the process, those from India were always held in priority.
In the first decade of the post-Stalinist era, 37 films were imported from India. Between 1954 and 1991, close to 210 Indian films were screened in Soviet theatres. This was in sharp contrast with the USA which accounted for just about 41 imported films. Statistics cited by Rajagopalan in her book suggest that between 1954 and 1989, 50 Indian films had drawn more than 20 million viewers, making them the most successful among foreign films. Films such as Dhool Ka phool (1959) and Love in Shimla (1960) acquired massive popularity in the 1960s. Then there were those like Bobby (1973), Muqaddar ka Sikandar (1978) and Disco Dancer (1982) that were a rage in the later Soviet years.
There were also bi-national co-productions which further strengthened the cinematic bond between the two countries. Salazkina in her article writes “these co-productions were meant to create films that would hybridise each culture’s favourite motifs and narrative structures, in the hopes of creating truly popular films.” “Accordingly, both countries would have equal representation in all functions, including two directors, two scriptwriters, and popular Soviet and Indian actors,” she adds.
The first Soviet-Indian co-production was Pardesi/Khozdenie za tri morya (1957), directed by K A Abbas and Vasili Pronin respectively. Featuring some of the biggest names in Indian and Soviet cinema such as Nargis and Oleg Strizhenov, the film was based on the story of a 15th century Russian’s merchant’s travels in India. Other Soviet-Indian co-productions included Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975), Voskhod nad Gangom (1975) and Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker (1970) which was partly shot in Moscow and featured Soviet actors.
The popularity of Indian cinema in the Soviet Union was such that when filmmakers in India shifted focus from the social and political issues of the early post-Independence years towards more entertainment-oriented features, the Soviet authorities increased the import of Indian popular films to generate revenue for Soviet distributors.
For the Soviet film viewers, the Indian films had offered a respite from their monotonous everyday lives. “They considered Indian cinema emblematic of a vastly different society where good cheer and optimism prevailed and where problems met with utopian resolutions, in a visual setting that was expressionist, embellished and extravagant,” writes Rajagopalan.
Lipkov in his article cites an emotional letter from a viewer of Indian films who wrote, “essentially beauty can only be seen in Indian films. Life is boring, grey and sordid but in Indian films (incomparable with any other) there is so much beauty, music and love. You see it and your heart rejoices. Everything is beautiful; there is so much beauty that you do not want to leave the cinema, especially when you think about what awaits you outside.”
Such a love affair with the Indian cinema continued well into 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. With the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991 and later with India joining the World Trade Organisation in 1995, there was a shift in the cultural values being represented in Indian cinema that were no longer of relevance to the viewers in the former Soviet Union. Indian films gradually disappeared from the screens in the Soviet states and were replaced by entertainment and information coming in from America. Even domestic productions in Russia took a hit as movie theatres started closing down and their premises were taken over as showrooms for cars, furniture and clothes. Bollywood movies, when screened on television occasionally, were restricted to viewership only for the older generation. What remained of the unabashed love for Indian cinema was only a lingering sense of nostalgia.
The entire list
Pardesi (1957)
Awaara (1957)
Shree 420 (1955)
Jagte Raho (1956)
Love in Moscow (1976)
Kitaab (1977)
Do aur Do Paanch (1980)
Aas Paas (1981)
Disco Dancer (1982)
Mera Naam Joker (1970)
Gunga Jumna (1961)
Baazi (1951)
Boot Polish (1954)
Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje (1955)
Dharmputra (1961)
Mehra's Eagle Films productions in association with Mosfilm:
Ali Baba Aur 40 Chor (1980)
Sohni Mahiwal (1984)
Ucha Dar Babe Nanak Da (1982)
Jwala Daku (1981)
Amrit (1986)
Note: Some of these films were partially shot in the Soviet Union while others were made in association with the Soviet Union, such as the film Love in Moscow which was a co-production between India and the Soviet Union.
