Once Upon a Time There Was a Woman
Larisa
Malyukova interview of Andrey Smirnov,
Novaya Gazeta, Sep 10, 2008
I began to study the material beginning with the history of the Tambov
Uprising and its suppression. But as I plunged into the material I made
discoveries for myself. The image of a slave to the nation is rooted not
only in the West, but also in our own minds: yes, we are eternal
lackeys. But even so, resistance to the Soviet regime was fierce and
nationwide. Already in February 1918, in the reports of the newly
created Cheka, it is mentioned that in only six provinces alone that
were taken under the authority of the Soviet People’s Committee there
were more than four hundred armed uprisings of the peasants. The
villages confronted the Soviet regime with such a unanimous resistance
that it gave rise to fear in the fevered mind of Lenin, who hated Russia
wholeheartedly. But there were two realms he particularly hated fiercely
- the peasantry and the clergy. It was not the capitalists and
landlords, but those two that suffered the most during the Revolution.
The most terrible losses, and the greatest number of deaths occurred
with the peasantry and clergy. There was a whole program. Seeing the
powerful opposition of the rural population, Lenin had a "constructive"
idea: to introduce class struggle into the village. Thus “Poor Peasants
Committees” were born. Village drunks and beggars were appointed chiefs
to Poor Peasants Committees, giving them the right to rob and kill
prosperous and productive peasants. Because of the terrible terror
inflicted on the country by the Poor Peasants Committees, they were done
away with by the autumn of 1918.
I began to dig deeply into this and a terrible picture was revealed...
According to the 1918 census, 83% of the Russian population was
considered to be peasants. And among the remaining 17%, it’s hard to say
exactly, but not less than 10% of them were considered workers. And who
were the workers? From November till May, for example, a guy would work
at the Putilov Factory and in May he’d go back to his village, first to
plow and sow, then to gather the hay, and then to harvest the crops. He
would do all of this until the threshing was over. Sometime soon after
The Feast of the Intercession (Pokrov) he would go back to the city.
The name of my heroine was not chosen by chance. Varvara is the Greek
word for stranger, a foreigner. As soon as she appears in the village,
she is immediately considered a stranger. This issue of seeing one's
neighbor as an enemy is paramount. How can we as Orthodox Christians
fulfill the great commandment of Christ, "Love thy neighbor as thyself"?
We have been thinking about relations between one another in Russia both
before the revolution and after it.
We are used to painting everything as either black or white. I think
that this motion picture should not contain a sugarcoated idealization
of the nation, nor scandalous disclosures. There are pros and cons. But
most importantly, it seems to me that the film has such a love for
Russia in it, but not a patriot’s fanfares. Love as a synonym for pain.
I should also make mention that the look of the film is based on
canvases of the Association of Wanderers. The frame itself dictates a
style reminiscent of Myasoedov, Perov, Makovsky, and Solomatkin.
You see, this movie is not a sermon. It is just my outlook on Russia, on
Russian history. |