The Quiet Don: Searching for a Soviet Pastoral

• In Event: Nature, For and Against II: Some Versions of Soviet Pastoral

Abstract

Ol’ga Preobrazhenskaia and Ivan Pravov’s Quiet Don was much anticipated, discussed in the critical press during its production. Yet when it premiered in 1931, the film was slated by critics and shelves, and the directors were excluded from ARK. This marked a moment in the evolution of the Soviet Pastoral, a transition point in the evolution of images of the village that had evolved through the 1920s, and the search for a particular melodramatic pastoral that will be the subject of this paper.

Author

• Emma Widdis, U of Cambridge (UK)