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worked on what became his most popular film,
Aleksandr Nevskii,
completed in 1938. Although
shelved for a while in 1939 in deference to the
Soviet Union's nonagression pact with Germany,
when released again in 1941, the film played an
important role in stirring up Russian nationalism
against a new Teutonic invader. His next project
was the monumental
Ivan the Terrible,
released in
two parts. The first was released in January 1945
to an enthusiastic reception, including
STALIN
's,
for which Eisenstein and his associates received
a Stalin Prize. The second part, focusing on the
troubling conclusion of Ivan's reign, inevitably
suggested similarities between Ivan and Stalin.
The film was withdrawn in 1946 and not
screened until 1958 in a different political cli-
mate. An earlier film,
Bezhin Meadow,
had also
encountered problems with Soviet cultural
watchdogs and was abandoned in 1937. Eisen-
stein's health suffered, in great part owing to the
stress of completing
Ivan the Terrible
under
Stalin's frequent interference, and he died of a
heart attack in 1948. He is buried in Novodevichi
Cemetery in Moscow.
Sergei Eisenstein, ca. 1940
(Hulton/Archive)
tributed in the West as
Ten Days That Shook the
World
) (1927), shot to commemorate the 10th
anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Eisen-
stein continued the combination of highly artis-
tic, politically engaged films that also worked as
Bolshevik propaganda.
The General Line,
his film
about the collectivization of agriculture, com-
missioned by Goskino in 1926, ran into political
problems when completed three years later, on
the eve of the collectivization campaign. With
heavy editing it was released as
The Old and the
New
in 1930. Seeking a change and an opportu-
nity to explore the new possibilities opened by
sound film, Eisenstein traveled to the United
States with his close assistants Grigorii
ALEKSAN
-
DROV
and Eduard Tisse. Although he was treated
with great respect befitting his status in the
world of cinema, the visit produced no concrete
results. A subsequent trip to Mexico led to the
unfinished work
Que Viva Mexico!
After his return
to Moscow in 1932, Eisenstein taught at the All-
Union State Institute of Cinema (VGIK) and
Elena Pavlovna
(1806-1873)
grand duchess
The wife of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich,
brother to Czars
ALEXANDER I
and
NICHOLAS I
,
Elena Pavlovna became the hostess of one of the
most influential salons in St. Petersburg in the
1850s and 1860s. A German princess by birth,
Elena Pavlovna arrived in Russia in September
1823, three months before her marriage. The
marriage was not a happy one; Mikhail Pavlo-
vich's rigid, militaristic interests did not coincide
with hers, and all of the couple's children but
one died before reaching adulthood. Elena
Pavlovna became a patron of the arts and schol-
arship, and steeped herself in the study of Rus-
sian culture and internal affairs, learning from
books and from the many important visitors to
her salon. The death of her abusive husband in
1849 allowed her to fully dedicate herself to her
salon, which became a center of wide-ranging
cultural and political discussion in the final years
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