Fedor Bondarchuk: 'Stalingrad'

By Stephen Norris

KinoSputniks closely analyse some key films from the history of Russian and Soviet cinema. Written by international experts in the field, they are intended for film enthusiasts and students, combining scholarship with an accessible style of writing.

This KinoSputnik about Fedor Bondarchuk's megahit Stalingrad (2013) examines the production, context and reception of the film, whilst offering a detailed reading of its key themes.

Fedor Bondarchuk’s 2013 blockbuster film Stalingrad shattered box-office records and dazzled viewers with its use of special effects, enhanced by its 3D IMAX format. The film transported viewers back to 1942 and the bloody battle that would turn the tide of the Second World War.

This new study situates the film within the context of ongoing debates about the meanings of the Second World War in Russia and previous films about the Battle of Stalingrad.

Primary readership will be among film studies students and film enthusiasts, but will also be of interest to anyone researching or studying the Battle of Stalingrad and the course of the Second World War.

A list of all books in the series is here on the Intellect website on the series page KinoSputnik

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781789384826

Book preview

1

Production History and Historical Context: Stalingrad as Memory Battleground

Fedor Bondarchuk’s film Stalingrad (2013), as its massive PR campaign routinely noted, was the first Russian film made in 3D IMAX. Bondarchuk’s film had an enormous budget (by Russian standards) of USD 30 million, including a federal subsidy of USD 10 million. It set box office records when released, grossing over USD 57 million in Russia and USD 68 million worldwide. It did unexpectedly well in China, becoming the first Russian film to lead the weekend box office in that country. It also had a limited release in the United States, where it did not make the hoped-for impact but still managed to receive quite a number of reviews for a ‘foreign’ film. Stalingrad’s significance in part rests on these ‘firsts’: the first Russian film shot in a format associated more with Hollywood, the highest-grossing domestic film in Russian history (it has relinquished that position, but held it for five years), the first post-Soviet Russian film to make a financial mark in China.

I will be honest: Stalingrad is not a very good film, just a so-so one, a conclusion based not just on my own opinion, but a general critical consensus. On the most comprehensive Russian site dedicated to cinema, over 101,000 people have rated the film, with the average score of 5.695/10.¹ The imdb.com rating from 15,000 mostly non-Russian viewers is 5.6/10.² Seventy-four critics around the world reviewed the film, with 37 giving it mostly positive reviews and 37 giving mostly negative, for a 50 per cent score.³ In Russia, 58 critics reviewed the film, with 62 per cent giving it a positive response. Thus, Stalingrad is at best a mediocre movie no matter who is delivering this judgment.

Nevertheless, Stalingrad is an important film. Its CGI effects are worthy of analysis, given its status as the first Russian movie made in 3D IMAX. Stalingrad’s significance, however, stems more from how well it captures important political, cultural, historical and societal debates in Russia at the time of its release, as well as how well it illustrates changes in Russia since communism’s collapse (and not just changes in cinema). Stalingrad is an instructive example of film as a ‘matrix of memory’, to use the term of the historian Jay Winter (2001): it is a movie that builds on the memory culture associated with the Great Patriotic War – the preferred term for the Second World War in Russia – and on the traumatic memories from Stalinism.

To grasp its importance requires a crash course on the history of the battle of Stalingrad and the uses of Soviet victory in first Stalinist, then post-Stalinist Soviet culture, and then post-Soviet culture. Once the war was won, to use the words of the Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, the Soviet state replaced the history of the war with the history of the victory (Alexievich 2017: xxviii). The nitty-gritty, nuanced, horrific, and heroic aspects of the conflict gave way to a mythic narrative that first focused on Stalin, then the Party and people as the true sources of victory. Yet this myth – later developed into a full-fledged cult of Victory – also came with conflicts: over Stalin and his role in the war, about the Party leadership and military leadership, about the specific contributions of certain people to the victory, and much, much more. The Soviet myth of Victory had to be built, renovated, refurbished and then dismantled before Bondarchuk and others could build a new one.

The making of a mythic victory

The front page of Pravda (‘Truth’) on 1 February 1943 did indeed tell the truth. Above the articles, adjacent to the newspaper title, appeared a few powerful lines (Figure 1.1):

Our troops at Stalingrad won a brilliant victory. They surrounded a group of German-fascist soldiers west of the central part of Stalingrad. They captured sixteen enemy generals. The enemy suffered enormous losses. The motherland welcomes and praises the valiant fighters and commanders of the heroic Red Army. Forward to new victories!

Caricature from Pravda by Boris Efimov, titled ‘Berlin Jubilee’, showing Goering chasing Hitler down the stairs into a bomb shelter.

Figure 1.1: Boris Efimov, ‘Berlin Jubilee’. Pravda 1 February 1943.

A Soviet information bureau article filled in more details to this breaking news of a substantial Soviet breakthrough; the rest of the front page consisted of telegrams to Stalin about this victory. More news followed, as well as announcements of medals and further explanation of the extraordinary events at Stalingrad. On the last page of the issue, a political cartoon by the well-known caricaturist Boris Efmov drew attention to the fact that Hitler had just celebrated his tenth anniversary in power on 30 January 1943. ‘Berlin Jubilee’ depicts Hitler, stuffed with papers marked ‘communiques from the Soviet-German front’, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, still clutching a paper calling for ‘total war’, and Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Göring, calling an air-raid warning through a microphone, fleeing to a bomb shelter. Efimov’s text declares: ‘In view of the fact that Reich Chancellor Hitler lost his voice, Luftwaffe Commander Göring took to the stage with an update on the current situation.’ Defeat has silenced the Nazi hierarchy and revealed them to be ridiculous buffoons.

The Pravda issue heralded the first major Soviet victory in what was already being called the Great Patriotic War. For just over five months – 23 August 1942 to 2 February 1943 – the Wehrmacht and Red Army fought for control of Stalingrad. The nature of the battle, one waged by forces under orders not to give an inch, ensured that it acquired a mythic quality while still being fought. The Soviet victory at Stalingrad turned the tide of the war, something recognized even at that time. ‘I am writing to you from this historic place at a historic time’, one Red Army soldier wrote to his parents (quoted in Merridale 2006: 171). The Pravda articles cited above established the first narrative and dominant emotions of the just-won victory: joyful, surprising, hopeful for more to come.

Soon the attention turned to the city of Stalingrad and the details of the battle there, subjects that filled newspaper and radio reports across the globe. Built-up in the years before the war as a model Stalinist city, it became all the more significant because it bore the name of the Soviet dictator. Stalingrad was strategically important because of its position on the Volga River and as a gateway to the rich Caspian oil fields. The strategic and symbolic significance of the city explains the fierceness of the fight within it: levelled by Luftwaffe bombs beginning on 23 August, an attack that killed 40,000 people, by the end of the month, Wehrmacht troops had reached the Volga. Red Army units held on in several buildings, reinforced by nightly crossings of troops, who also suffered heavy casualties. Between September and November, intense combat took place building-to-building, with soldiers from both armies commenting they could hear their opponents in adjacent buildings. Stalin and Hitler both ordered soldiers and materials sent to the city; both considered its defence or capture of vital significance. As a result, many combatants and observers compared it to Verdun, but as the battle grew more intense, even these comparisons fell flat. ‘This is no Verdun’, one Soviet journalist wrote, ‘[t]his is something new in the history of warfare. This is Stalingrad’ (quoted in Hellbeck 2015: 2).

To break out of the closing German trap, Soviet High Command launched ‘Operation Uranus’, a counterattack, on 19 November 1942. Others followed, ultimately encircling the German Sixth Army. Friedrich Paulus, the German Field Marshal (promoted to this rare rank by Hitler with the hope that he would not shame himself by surrendering), surrendered in February 1943. Total casualties in the battle neared 2 million. By 3 February 1943, the front page of Pravda could trumpet ‘the historic battle of Stalingrad’ as one that was ‘over’ with ‘a total victory for our troops’. The defeat was the worst ever in German history; after Stalingrad, the Red Army held the advantage and pushed it through occupied Soviet territories and beyond, culminating in the surrender in Berlin in May 1945. In his victory speech, delivered over the radio on 9 May 1945, Stalin tapped into the language first present in the initial articles about Stalin. The Soviet dictator paid tribute to the Soviet people, noting their sacrifices and suffering, but also their heroism and bravery. Stalin highlighted another element to the victory that had begun after Stalingrad; namely, that the Red Army had saved Europe from tyranny and ushered in a new era a peace. He ended his speech with the following words:

I congratulate you upon victory, my dear men and women compatriots!

Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our Motherland and won victory over the enemy!

Glory to our great people, the people victorious!

Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the struggle against the enemy and gave their lives for the freedom and happiness of our people!⁴

(Stalin 1945)

Notably, he did not mention the Communist Party or himself. Those additions would come later.

Given the above, it is not surprising that the Stalinist government soon turned the victory into a mythic story. The mythmaking had started during the battle itself. Before the city was named after Stalin, it was called Tsaritsyn. During the Russian Civil War, the Don Cossack Ataman Petr Krasnov attacked the city in July 1918, hoping to capture it and its resources for the anti-Bolshevik cause. The city had become the largest industrial centre in the region prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, ensuring that whoever held it during the Civil War held a vital site. The Bolsheviks gained control of it even before November 1917. Krasnov aimed to wrest that control away. Standing against him was the newly appointed local chairman of the military committee and people’s commissar for Soviet nationalities, Ioseb Jugashvili, better known by his revolutionary nom de guerre, Stalin. It was in the defence of the city that Stalin displayed a ruthlessness and energy that would later become his hallmark (Kotkin 2014: 300–10). He also displayed a lack of intelligence on military matters that would appear again in 1941. Despite this, and mostly because of the actions of Dmitry Zhloba’s ‘Steel Division’ soldiers, Tsaritsyn was saved and remained in Bolshevik hands. Stalin, meanwhile, claimed credit for this victory: the city made Stalin ‘Stalin’, and was renamed for him in 1925, even before he became the undisputed leader of the USSR.

Stalin himself drew on this Civil War past and his own biography to inspire Soviet citizens during the Great Patriotic War. While the Battle of Stalingrad raged, the Soviet leader tapped his favourite directing duo, the Vasil'ev Brothers, who had directed Stalin’s favourite film Chapaev, to make The Defence of Tsaritsyn. Part one of that new film premiered in April 1942, just months before another defence of the same city proved necessary. The film and its reminders of previous heroism thus became part of the early myth of the Battle of Stalingrad. The miraculous victory of the Civil War, one orchestrated by Stalin (at least in the way it was told afterwards), could be fused with the miraculous victory of 1943, one inspired and orchestrated by Stalin again. Stalingrad as a myth and not just history, however, took other symbols and other heroes beyond just the city’s namesake. It also took a house.

The making of a mythic house

On 19 November 1942, Pravda reported the actions at a single Stalingrad building. Part of what had become a regular feature on ‘Stalingrad Days’, the story talked about ‘Pavlov’s House’, an ‘ordinary house, no different from the ones surrounding it’ in outward appearance, but one made different because of the bravery of Soviet troops defending it. The story relates that the German enemy occupied all the houses near this one, but Soviet troops, led by Sergeant Iakov Pavlov, listened closely to their commanders and snuck inside. Holed up in the midst of the enemy, Pavlov’s troops resisted all attacks. Stories began to circulate about the exploits of Pavlov’s men and the house that now bore his name. Soviet snipers