Overview

In Not According to Plan, Maria Belodubrovskaya reveals the limits on the power of even the most repressive totalitarian regimes to create and control propaganda. Belodubrovskaya's revisionist account of Soviet filmmaking between 1930 and 1953 highlights the extent to which the Soviet film industry remained stubbornly artisanal in its methods, especially in contrast to the more industrial approach of the Hollywood studio system. Not According to Plan shows that even though Josef Stalin recognized cinema as a ""mighty instrument of mass agitation and propaganda"" and strove to harness the Soviet film industry to serve the state, directors such as Eisenstein, Alexandrov, and Pudovkin had far more creative control than did party-appointed executives and censors. The Stalinist party-state, despite explicit intent and grandiose plans to build a ""Soviet Hollywood"" that would release a thousand features per year, failed to construct even a modest mass propaganda cinema. Belodubrovskaya's wealth of evidence shows that the regime's desire to disseminate propaganda on a vast scale was consistently at odds with its compulsion to control quality and with Stalin's intolerance of imperfection. Not According to Plan is a landmark in Soviet cultural history and the global history of cinema.

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9781501709944

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Reviews

Maria Belodubrovskaya provides a compelling argument that runs counter to received wisdom concerning the repeated failures of the Stalinist cinema industry in meeting the goals mandated by the state organizations overseeing film production. Instead of focusing on the top-down organizational structures of the industry, Belodubrovskaya convincingly locates the source in a bottom-up paradigm that stresses the industry's failure in developing professional and efficient middle management, on the one hand, and the power of individual director-masters in controlling the entire production process, on the other. --Vladimir Padunov, University of Pittsburgh Rich, thoughtful, and information-packed, Not According to Plan will be widely used in academia and beyond. It's a wonderfully detailed, faultlessly argued, groundbreaking book whose potential impact stretches above the field of film history. --Yuri Tsivian, University of Chicago

Rich, thoughtful, and information-packed, Not According to Plan will be widely used in academia and beyond. It's a wonderfully detailed, faultlessly argued, groundbreaking book whose potential impact stretches above the field of film history. -- Yuri Tsivian, University of Chicago Maria Belodubrovskaya provides a compelling argument that runs counter to received wisdom concerning the repeated failures of the Stalinist cinema industry in meeting the goals mandated by the state organizations overseeing film production. Instead of focusing on the top-down organizational structures of the industry, Belodubrovskaya convincingly locates the source in a bottom-up paradigm the stresses the industry's failure in developing professional and efficient middle management, on the one hand, and the power of individual director-masters in controlling the entire production process, on the other. -- Vladimir Padunov, University of Pittsburgh

Maria Belodubrovskaya provides a compelling argument that runs counter to received wisdom concerning the repeated failures of the Stalinist cinema industry in meeting the goals mandated by the state organizations overseeing film production. Instead of focusing on the top-down organizational structures of the industry, Belodubrovskaya convincingly locates the source in a bottom-up paradigm that stresses the industry's failure in developing professional and efficient middle management, on the one hand, and the power of individual director-masters in controlling the entire production process, on the other. -- Vladimir Padunov, University of Pittsburgh Rich, thoughtful, and information-packed, Not According to Plan will be widely used in academia and beyond. It's a wonderfully detailed, faultlessly argued, groundbreaking book whose potential impact stretches above the field of film history. -- Yuri Tsivian, University of Chicago

Author Information

Maria Belodubrovskaya is Assistant Professor of Film in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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