If there were only a few more Ruskies

So here's a new segment.

Grand historical question time.

So all you history buffs out there, let me give you a thinker...

Now Russia in the first World War lost more people than any other combatant. Moreover, many of these were Russia's best and brightest. Some historians (including I believe, Orlando Figes) have cited Russia's lack of a strong middle position party between the militarist White Russians and the Bolshevik-led Reds in the Russian Civil War as the cause of the Bolshevik victory. Many of those historians have assumed this was then due to Russia's incomplete industrial revolution (often using a progress/stages version of history which I'm always suspicious of).

But what if there was the potential for a middle position party? What if there were dynamic youths who could have led a new faction of Russians who could overcome the Reds and charm/defeat the Whites... that is if they hadn't been killed in the early years of the first World War.

The early years of the first World War gutted the Russian officer class, and the military was often the best route for advancement for upwardly-mobile Russians. If it hadn't been for all that slaughter, perhaps the even greater slaughters to follow might have been avoided.

If the idea is true, it adds another layer of tragedy to early 20th century history, but perhaps it also gives us a new way to interpret the Russian Revolution. And then the lessons derived from the birth of the Soviet Union might need some rethinking as well...

Perhaps...
Perhaps...
Perhaps...

Sometimes you need to go where everyone has a gun or my Arsenal review

Don't you need to go where everyone has a gun? ie, the Arsenal!

And so I watched Arsenal (I posted up the movie in parts in a previous session). Weird, stirring, long, meandering, epic, more adjectives stuff, it really is. The movie traces the full course (well most of the full course) of the Russian Civil War in Ukraine (I don't want to imply that Ukraine is part of Russia, but I don't have a good term for the action in Ukraine and in many ways it was an extension of what was going on in Russia, so I'm sticking with that terminology), it starts with the ending period of World War I, when all of Ukraine was devastated (really stark imagery in that), going to the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic (it was a short lived government that was German and later US/UK/France/Poland backed), moving on to the raging war between the White Russian Army and Ukrainian forces and finally to engagements between the White Russian Army and the Ukrainian Bolshevik Army. It doesn't quite get to the end where the Bolsheviks are triumphant but instead shows the triumphant Ukrainian Bolshevik spirit (I'm not endorsing here Bolshevism, I actually hate Communism quite immensely, but I'm just trying to give you a sense of the movie).

This movie is quite the mixed bag. It has been called a classic and I can see how people can look at it as one. It has amazing use of montage at times that juxaposes vivid images, creating immense emotional reactions. It also has immense symbolism to its scenes which are sometimes painstakingly crafted. Even some of the long takes which just dwell on scenes of men without legs or mothers who lost their children are heart breaking. In addition, as a historical document it is a fascinating as a document of the Bolsheviks defending their crushing of Ukrainian nationalism. As a piece of film theory it reflects early Russian theories of montage, of agi-film (agitation films), of semi-plotlessness and of semi-herolessness (for another good example of all this film theory stuff (an example I'll be citing), check out Battleship Potemkin). However, I can't say I'm thrilled with movie. It has many brilliant pieces. The best is probably when a soldier is hit by laughing gas (I don't think laughing gas was actually used in World War I (although mustard gas was), but I suppose its symbolic of the insanity of war as the soldier laughs at the corpses of his comrades) and an opposing soldier looks at him, and throws down his gun asking "Where is the enemy?" and then, as montage flashes with other scenes, the questioning soldier's commanding officer comes up behind him, orders him to pick up his gun, and finally shoots the soldier who refused to fight. There are several other moments like this where the film seems brilliant.

And yet, there lacks a force to string it together. The film lacks narrative tension. The plot is often absent, and when present it is stretched out far too long. Unlike Battleship Potemkin, which also stretches out a simple plot, the montage is too slow in many scenes (although there are scenes with quick cutting) and is too focused on exposition to provide visual tension. Perhaps the problem is that the film wants to do too much. It wants to explain the revolutionary cause, it wants to denounce Ukrainian nationalists, I think it even takes a symbolic swipe at Ukrainian anarchists. And it goes across a significant number of events without any developing any character (although there is a sort of main character he is largely blank except for his symbolic credentials as the Ukrainian worker) or even a sense of character in the masses (as Battleship Potemkin in some ways does (especially in the specialized mass of the battleship)) to personalize the events. Maybe I'm just not used to this type of film, maybe it's just because I watched the film in pieces on youTube (I know that sounds bad, but I watched them back to back and I think overall it didn't have too big of an effect), but I couldn't find any driving force between the moments of brilliance this film offered. Without some tension pulling me through the movie, I couldn't fully connect with it on an emotional or intellectual level.

I'm overall glad I watched this movie, and I can see how some people could absolutely love it, but I can't really recommend it. On the other hand, I can't not recommend it. If I had to rate it (and I do because I want to and I AM RAND) I'd give it a 6 out of 10. Maybe I'm being cruel to a classic, but if that's the case, well, sometimes you just got to seize the arsenal.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Arsenal

So here's a film I stumbled upon solely because of my film project. I don't know that much about it really, except that it's a film from 1928 about the Russian Civil War (still early enough to have some first person perspective) and according to its Wikipedia article it's somewhat ambivalent about the Soviets, maybe. Apparently the director is famous as well, I can't really say from my own knowledge if this is a true fact since I am not a film expert but only an amateur. But if I do use it I'll watch it and maybe do a review too. But anyways for any who want to watch it here are the links:
Arsenal, Part 1
Arsenal, Part 2
Arsenal, Part 3
Arsenal, Part 4
Arsenal, Part 5
Arsenal, Part 6
Arsenal, Part 7
Arsenal, Part 8