I found it ironic that the first line of text seen in the short propagandistic cartoon is how fascism leads to the mass destruction, starvation, and death of millions of people. I far more closely link starvation to the Soviet Union and the Russia before it than I do to Nazi Germany. The actual creature that is symbolizing the fascists is a pig/wolf hybrid. I thought of this as an interesting choice as it is supposed to be menacing but the connotations associated with pigs are far more related to greed and how disgusting they are. I also find the fact that the Soviets are represented as horsemen and tanks as an interesting choice. The first thing I think of is the Bronze Horseman of St. Petersburg/Leningrad. This is most likely the reason why, however horsemen don’t seem to be an intimidating/futuristic force and I don’t feel match the Soviet Union’s theme of industry and development like the tanks. The fact that the tanks are breaking down trees can be seen as a symbol that Russia is urbanizing and making economic capital from its natural resources. The ending of the short cartoon sees some soviet airplanes flying into the sky into what seems to be like heaven. This is a interesting choice as religion was ridiculed in the Soviet Union. If I’m not mistaken I think this same song was featured in the Russian film “Wings” from 1966 which would definitely be an interesting development to the meaning/ending of that film!
3 thoughts on “Fascist Boots”
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Colby, it’s so great that you remember “Wings” so clearly that you recall the patriotic song in that film! But no, I’m sorry to say, it is a different song. The song in “Fascist Boots” is specifically a hymn addressed to Stalin; the song in “Wings” (for other students’ info, this is a beautiful 1966 film by Larisa Shepitko about a woman who was a fighter pilot in the Soviet airforce in WWII) is a different patriotic song that does not mention Stalin: called “Steel Air Squadron,” it was written in 1929 and based on a poem written in 1927 called “Airforce March”; during WWII two new verses were added with specifically anti-fascist content. So, your instinct is correct that these two songs are both patriotic, composed in a similar style, and important to rouse patriotic sentiment during WWII — but they are in fact different songs. (To hear more patriotic Soviet songs, check out the Elective assignments from Session 31.)
The Bronze Horseman is an astute observation. I believe the detail is consistent with a broader conclusion that can be drawn about the Soviet Union during WWII: in an effort to rally the masses and international allies, the Soviet Union deemphasized its state doctrine of Marxism-Leninism and appealed to raw patriotism. For example, the Soviet WWII propaganda posters substitute the anti-capitalist messaging, cartoon abstractions, and strictly contemporary imagery with historical Russian heroes and calls for the defense of “Mother Russia” (rather than the more neutral and inclusive “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”). This conservative aesthetic shift within the authoritarian Soviet state arguably highlights the resemblance between the Soviet Union under Stalin and its fascist enemies.
Colby and Zach, these are both great comments! I am sorry that we did not get around to discussing this little but potent film in class. In a sense, it is an animated version of the propaganda posters from this time. Zach, your comment about the aesthetic and ideological shifts in WWII-era propaganda follows nicely on my own discussion in class about how the messaging to and around the role of women in Stalinist-era propaganda posters also radically shifted as a result of the losses of the war and the need to care for the many war orphans and begin to regrow the drastically reduced Russian population (this remains a concern to the present day, as the population of the country has mostly been in decline since WWII). One additional shift around this time that you might find interesting is the increasing “Sovietization” of Russian literary classics such as Pushkin in the late 1930s and the 1940s. Initially these 19c classic Russian writers were viewed with skepticism (we recall, as I mentioned in class, Mayakovsky’s call to “throw them overboard the ship of modernity”). But the cultural conservatism and “calcification” (to borrow Zamyatin’s term) that occurred under Stalin starting in the late 1930s led to these writers being reinterpreted, reinvented, and recanonized for the Soviet reader and Soviet literary establishment.