{"id":1051,"date":"2020-04-24T03:19:10","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T03:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2020-04-24T04:00:09","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T04:00:09","slug":"youth-in-burnt-by-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/nkhumalo\/youth-in-burnt-by-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth in Burnt by the Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the ending credits of Burnt by the Sun rolled onto the screen, a single tear also rolled down my right cheek. This film really pulled at my heart strings. By the end, I had forgotten that it was based on historical figures, but the ending reminded me just how pervasive and cruel Stalin’s rule over the Soviet Union. The characters in the film were not just fabricated for the plot but real people that suffered. Like a hot sun in the sky, the revolution did not discriminate when it came to persecution, all victims of its constant siege. The scene with Colonel Kotov and his young daughter, Nadya, stood out to me.<\/p>\n

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The director uses feet to illustrate the emphasis and need for youth in Stalinist Russia. While caressing his daughter’s soft foot in his own calloused hands and with a hint of sadness in his eyes, Kotov says, “Because we’re building up Soviet power for that… so, that all their lives… people will have feet like yours”. The phrase ‘all their lives’ demonstrates that real Soviet potential can only be attained by young people untainted by the hardships of the revolution and hard life. Those that know only the joys and fruits of the revolution can survive. ‘Building up power for that’ reveals that even the general knows his work and the efforts of other revolutionaries are not meant to celebrate in the country that helped create. They simply serve as steps for those with soft feet to walk on to reach Soviet greatness. Nadya’s young foot at the center of the frame amplifies these sentiments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the ending credits of Burnt by the Sun rolled onto the screen, a single tear also rolled down my right cheek. This film really pulled at my heart strings. By the end, I had forgotten that it was based on historical figures, but the ending reminded me just how pervasive and cruel Stalin’s rule […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1023,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-11-stalinism-thaw-and-stagnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1023"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}