“Of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important.”

-Lenin (founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924)

The Soviet Union had its origins in the Russian Revolution of 1917 after leftist revolutionists overthrew Russia’s Czar Nicholas II. However, the Soviet Union was only instated after the defeat of the White Army during the Russian Civil War in 1922.

Soon after the rise of the Soviet Union, cinema was utilised as a propaganda machine to achieve and maintain power over the public. It also allowed the political ideologies of the party to resonate with the the workers of Russia, as the general public would have watched the movies for entertainment purposes; this allowed many of the underlying themes of the propaganda films to be unconsciously idealised.