Religious Symbols in Russia 1920-1930: Sergej Eisenstein and Andrej Platonov
Abstract
Traditionally cultural history emphasizes the break in the transmission of signs caused by the October Revolution in the early 20th century. My thesis is that the new power structures of the early Soviet time depended on the demonstration of a break on the symbolical level, because it constructed itself out of the existing symbols of various religions, while at the same time claiming to be an absolute historical beginning.
I would like to research the continuity and discontinuity of religious symbols in relation to their pre-revolutionary context in the early Soviet films by Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Dovzenko and the works of Andrei Platonov, taking into account their writings and paintings. With my project I would like to contribute to the translation of religious symbols at the beginning of the 20th century and demonstrate the mutual influences of art and politics on each other.