The Trouble with an Author -Kino-Pravda and the Dissidence Narrative

This thesis is an attempt to historicize Vertovovedenie in order to examine assumed resistance of 1920s Soviet filmmakers perpetuated by english-based art historians of the revisionist school in 1970s and 1980s. The dissidence narrative that presupposes watershed between 1920s and 1930s USSR, will be juxtaposed with a counter-narrative of continuity by considering newsreel project Kino-Pravda (1922-1925) through what might be called an institutional approach. The aim is to analyze knowledge produced in the second wave Vertovovedenie and its influence on the present day scholarship on Vertov. The circumscription imposed by revisionist approach led to misinterpretation of contested views expressed in 1920s press to be a symptom of dissidence, overlooking the struggle over meaning within emerging Bolshevik intelligentsia. Historical assessment of those press debates will show that adversarial tone and public scrutiny were a genre of communication inside the discourse of power defined by the Party, not in opposition to it.