Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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A few favorite Soviet films:
The Cranes Fly
(Letyat Zhuravli), 1957: Tale of a musician who goes to war,
and the romantic turmoil he leaves behind.
Ballad of a Soldier
(Ballada o Soldate), 1959: Tender and heartbreaking
account of a soldier on leave in the few days before he's killed in World
War II.
Solaris,
1972: Psychological science fiction journey by Andrei Tarkovsky;
remade by Hollywood in 2003.
Seventeen Instants of Spring
(Semnadstat Mgnovenii Vesny), 1973: Tale of a
Soviet spy in wartime Germany carefully balancing his dual identity; Stirlitz
became a hero and antihero for Soviet jokes for decades.
Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears
(Moskva Slezam ne Verit), 1979: Bittersweet
tale of three young women from small towns who arrive in Moscow to pursue
their dreams.
Nostalgia,
1984: Soviet-Italian chronicle of a couple's relationship, one of the
most accessible films of Andrei Tarkovsky.
Repentance
(Pokoyaniye), 1987: Surreal and tragicomic saga of Stalinist repres-
sion in his homeland of Georgia, suppressed by censors for years.
Little Vera
(Verochka), 1988: Account of a young woman's coming of age amid
the social drift, shortages, and alcoholism in provincial Gorbachev-era Russia.
And post-Soviet Russian films:
Burnt by the Sun
(Utomlyonnoye Solntsem), 1994: Oscar-winning account of
a sun-kissed summer and the cold-blooded, Stalin-era secret police.
Prisoner of the Caucasus
(Kavkazky Plennik), 1996: Moving, nuanced portrait
of Russians and Chechens during the first Chechnya War.
East-West
(Vostok-Zapad), 1999: Russian-French film about a Russian-French
couple whose marriage and lives fall apart after they're lured back to Stalin's
repressive Soviet Union.
The Wedding
(Svadba), 2000: Painfully authentic drama about small-town
romance and limited opportunity.
Nightwatch
(Nochnoi Dozor), 2003: Big-budget thriller featuring vampires,
darkness, and strong special effects.
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was afraid to collect it; he was eventually
exiled in 1974. He returned to post-Soviet
Russia in 1994 and continued to write
essays critical of Russia's direction and
moral decay until his death in 2008.
Perhaps post-Soviet Russia's most suc-
cessful writer is
Boris Akunin
(a pseud-
onym), who has tapped into a mass-market
hunger for accessible historical fiction that
satirizes Russian faults without ridiculing
