Soviet cinema is often shaped by Communist Party politics rather than audience tastes, and when the dictates of the Party leadership change, the film industry may be left in a difficult position. From Lenin's death in 1924 to Stalin's ultimate triumph in the power struggle that followed, the Soviet Union experienced a period of uncertainty, and Bolshevik policy was subject to radical alterations. Sergei Eisenstein's Old and New is an example of a film caught in the complexities of changing Soviet agricultural policy. [In a footnote, the critic adds: "For those who have not seen the film, a plot synopsis is in order. Marfa Lapkina, a peasant woman in a poor village, is determined to overcome the backward farming methods of the area. The local kulaks refuse to help her. When a Soviet agriculture specialist proposes the formation of a dairy cooperative, Marfa is an enthusiastic supporter, but most peasants are suspicious and refuse to join. The backward peasants try to fight a drought by forming a religious procession, but they fail. When a cream separator is introduced to the villagers, it proves a success and wins many converts to the cooperative. After some difficulty the peasants save enough money to purchase a cooperative bull, Fomka, but jealous kulaks poison him. The cooperative seeks to acquire a tractor, but bureaucratic inertia delays its delivery. Due to Marfa's efforts, it finally arrives; the pompous tractor driver is humbled, and the villagers are united in their efforts for a successful cooperative."] Originally, the film was to be a simple lesson on the need for the Soviet peasantry to join collective farms, but it was in production from 1926 to 1929, the very years in which Soviet farm policy was undergoing major changes. Eisenstein responded to the fluctuating political climate, and the finished flim emerged as a sophisticated examination of ancient Russian tradition and Marxist modernism.

In order to understand the complexities of Eisenstein's subject and the difficulties he faced during production, some historical background is necessary. Russia has always been a land of dichotomies. The vast Russian plain, one-sixth of the world's land surface, stretches into both Europe and Asia. Forces of Western European civilization have been at odds with Slavic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, resulting in the split between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles. An additional schism exists between the urban-based, autocratic government and the rural peasantry, which has always resisted interference from far-off St. Petersburg or Moscow. The primary concern of the peasants has always been their attachment to the land, reflected in the myth of "Mother Russia." When the Bolsheviks gained power in 1917 they were an essentially urban movement with Western European intellectual roots. They would have preferred immediate nationalization of all farmland, but Lenin understood the old peasant suspicion of governments. Since the government was too weak at that point to enforce collectivization, Lenin sanctioned the system of individual land holdings of the peasants, and he recognized that the ideal of collectivization would have to wait until the new socialist state was on more solid footing.

Lenin's New Economic Policy (N.E.P.), initiated in 1921, was an additional concession to practical considerations. N.E.P. was a semi-capitalist system designed to allow the Soviet Union time to recover from the economic chaos of the Civil War. N.E.P. permitted the peasants to solidify their private holdings and sell grain on the open market. The wealthier peasants, the kulaks, became even stronger as a result of N.E.P. concessions, and the Bolsheviks recognized them as a threat to the future of socialism. The Bolsheviks, however, intended N.E.P. to be a temporary measure, and they realized that eventually socialism would have to be taken into the countryside.

All these historical and economic factors came to a head at the same time that Eisenstein was making Old and New. The middle and late 1920's was a period of serious dissension within the Bolshevik Party, and from this struggle Stalin emerged as the unchallenged power in the Soviet Union. Even before Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin had begun laying the groundwork for his ascension by forming a triumvirate within the Politburo with G. E. Zinoviev and L. B. Kamenev. Within a year after Lenin's death, they had forced Trotski to resign as Commissar of War, thus ending any potential danger of a Bonapartist movement. With Trotski weakened, Stalin could direct his energies against other Politburo members who might represent threats to his power, and the sham nature of the triumvirate became apparent. In striking at his fellow Politburo members, Stalin exploited the debate over Soviet agriculture within the party.

The inner circles of the Communist Party were divided into two groups on the rural issue. The left wing of the Politburo was represented by Stalin's allies, Zinoviev and Kamenev. They believed that a stable socialist state could not be maintained unless the countryside was modernized. They urged the government to encourage the rapid collectivization of farmland to coincide with immediate industrialization of the Soviet economy. A rightwing opposition soon crystallized headed by N. Bukharin, M. Tomski, and A. Rykov. While they accepted the principle of modernization of the economy, they opposed collectivization for the immediate future. They felt that the state should continue to encourage individual farm holdings and appease the kulaks in order to meet the pressing need to supply grain to the cities.

With the lines clearly drawn, Stalin was able to play one side against the other while trying to find a practical solution to the farm problem. Stalin decided that it would be necessary to delay collectivization until the Soviet economy was more fully revived under N.E.P. This also gave him the chance to undermine the positions of the other two triumvirs, who were identified with the left-wing, procollectivization faction of the Politburo. Stalin threw his support to the rightist faction, but he was careful to appear as something of a conciliator. The issue came to a head at the important Fourteenth Party Congress in 1925. The resolution on agriculture which was outlined at the preliminary Fourteenth Party Conference in October called for continued support of the individual efforts of the peasants, with a provision warning against the kulaks gaining undue power included as a concession to the leftist faction. When the full Congress met in December, the leftists were denounced by Stalin and it was obvious that collectivization was defeated.

In the aftermath of the Congress, Stalin was able to cripple the left wing. When Zinoviev and Kamenev recognized that Stalin had abandoned them, they sought to form an alliance with Trotski to protect their position. Stalin had already removed several Zinoviev supporters from key party positions, and when he saw the alliance forming around his arch-enemy Trotski, he moved swiftly against it. By October, 1926, Stalin had forced Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotski out of the Politburo. When Trotski led a counter-demonstration on the tenth anniversary of the November Revolution, he was banished to Alma A ta and Kamenev and Zinoviev were forced to issue renunciations of their views. Stalin had shattered the illusion of the triumvirate and asserted his personal authority.

The defeat of the leftist group allowed Stalin to direct his energies against the right wing of the party, and again the agriculture issue provided the opportunity. Although some cooperative farms had been established under N.E.P., 97 percent of the sown acreage was still in individual holdings. A crisis occurred when the cities experienced a serious grain shortage in the winter of 1927-8. The grain shortage was partly the result of a work slowdown by peasants and withholding measures by the kulaks. The rightist faction of the Politburo, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomski, was identified as the pro-kulak group, and the grain shortage left them in public disfavor. This was the opportunity that Stalin needed. Although Stalin had supported the rightist faction, he had been careful not to be identified too closely with them. Stalin claimed that the kulaks, and, by implication, the prokulak faction, were to blame for the grain shortage. He initiated emergency measures to extract grain from the countryside, and he declared that it was time to "strike hard" against the kulaks. By the beginning of 1929, Stalin had forced the rightist faction to issue confessions of ideological guilt, and Trotski had been banished from the Soviet Union. Stalin had triumphed over friend and foe alike.

The four-year period from 1925 to 1929 was thus a time of crisis for the young socialist state. The split within the party and the question of the future of the Soviet economy resulted in a general uncertainty about what lay ahead. Stalin was playing at power politics in his maneuvers on the agriculture issue, but he was also responding pragmatically to legitimate economic factors. In 1925 Stalin recognized the need to give N.E.P. additional time. By 1929, however, Stalin could not continue to concede to the wishes of the kulaks, who were demanding higher grain prices, without losing the crucial support of the urban proletariat. The grain shortage of 1928 had been a timely crisis which precipitated a necessary shift in policy. Before 1929 was out Stalin announced both the First Five-Year Plan for industrialization and the collectivization of the farms. In doing so he made the ominous statement, "We must smash the kulaks, eliminate them as a class… After four years of debate, the turmoil of collectivization was about to begin.

When Eisenstein undertook his film on Soviet agriculture, he had to come to terms with the various historical forces which shaped the lives of the peasants. The peasant relationship to the land, the old dichotomies and struggles in Russian life, and the complex process of forming Soviet agricultural policy in the 1920's were factors influencing Eisenstein's handling of his subject.

There was little in Eisenstein's background to qualify him as an authority on Russian agriculture. He was born of well-to-do parents in Riga, an old Hanseatic city which was closer to Western Europe in culture than to old Russia. He spent much of his youth in another city modelled on Western standards, St. Petersburg, and like many products of gentile Russian families, he learned French and German as a child. His thoroughly urban background and training as an engineer would seem to preclude his grasping the nuances of peasant culture, but he was a man of enormous intellectual curiosity. His voluminous reading and his capacity to do thorough research were his qualifications for undertaking Old and New.

When Eisenstein initiated the project, he was determined to do exhaustive research on both the economic aspects of farming and the culture of rural Russia. As Marie Seton said, "scientific fever possessed him," and he searched through documents of the Commissariat of Agriculture, examining records and reports. He hunted through newspapers and books on Soviet agriculture to the point of consulting A. A. Zorich's brochure, About Cauliflowers. He cited the resolution on agriculture of the Fourteenth Party Congress, and from what he assumed was the party line on agriculture, he took the original title for the film, The General Line. A very important source was a book of sketches of a rural village, 0. Davydov's Maklochania. The book includes a discussion of a dairy cooperative which served as a prototype for the one depicted in Old and New. Davydov tells of the farm acquiring a cream separator and pooling funds to purchase a cooperative bull, and both incidents appear as episodes in Old and New. In fact, the cream separator as a symbol of modernization so fascinated Eisenstein that he kept an advertisement of an American separator on the wall of his Moscow apartment. In addition to this intellectual research, Eisenstein was anxious to get a sense of the visceral quality of village life. In order to do this, he, his co-director Grigori Alexandrov, and their cameraman Eduard Tisse went to live in a village for a month before beginning production.

Although Eisenstein's preparation for the film acquainted him with the history and culture of the Russian peasantry, he could not have anticipated the shifts in agricultural policy within the party. He began work on the film in the spring of 1926, but did not complete it until the fall of 1929, the exact period in which the debate over Soviet agriculture was being waged. The inability of the artist to contend with changing historical forces is evident in the history of Old and New.

Eisenstein and Alexandrov began work on their agricultural film, then referred to as The General Line, in May, 1926. They completed the first draft on May 23 and reworked that into a more concise scenario which they submitted to their studio, Sovkino, on June 30. They then worked out a contract with Sovkino which specified that shooting should begin on October 1, 1926, and terminate on February 1, 1927. Eisenstein began shooting The General Line on schedule, and shooting progressed through the winter of 1926 at Rostov-on-Don, Baku, and the northern Caucasus. But in January, 1927, Sovkino instructed Eisenstein to stop shooting The General Line in order to begin making October for the tenth anniversary of the November Revolution. For the rest of the year Eisenstein was involved in his celebrated race to finish October before the November 7 anniversary date and before Pudovkin presented The End of St. Petersburg.

The chronology of the first phases of production of The General Line indicate that work was progressing smoothly on the film until the order came to begin production of October. The anniversary was certainly a memorable occasion for the young socialist regime, and it is not surprising that Sovkino would want to have its famous young director involved in a commemorative film. On the other hand, recalling a film crew from location on a moment's notice was not a matter to be taken lightly by a film industry which was not abundantly wealthy. It seems very likely that Sovkino was concerned about the shape of the Communist Party's agricultural policy at the time. When the order to postpone The General Line was given, Stalin was still adhering to a policy of encouraging individual farm production and appeasing the kulaks. A film calling for collectivization and depicting kulaks as incorrigible villains could represent an embarrassment if Stalin's stance became the long-range policy, and at that point there was no indication that Stalin would change his position. A film in honor of the November Revolution must have seemed much safer to Sovkino; it would rally public support for the film industry and allow the regime to maintain an image of unity even while Stalin was trying to undo Trotski and others within the party.

In fact, the title, The General Line, was one of the most ironic misnomers in the history of cinema. It was precisely the dissension within the inner ranks of the Bolsheviks which precluded the establishment of a general line on agriculture. Although Eisenstein considered the decision on agriculture of the Fourteenth Party Congress to be the inspiration of the title, this was a curious claim. The Congress did not endorse collectivization; it sanctioned individual holdings. The General Line was on unstable ground from the beginning.

After October was finished, Eisenstein returned to The General Line in the spring of 1928. Again the date is significant. This was after the winter grain shortage which had inspired Stalin's shift in attitude toward the peasants. Kulaks were once again officially labelled as villains, and there was no worry about portraying them as such in the film. Eisenstein returned to the film with a second scenario which he and Alexandrov completed in April of 1928, and shooting on the film continued from July to November of that year. The film was then edited and presented to Sovkino, where it was given approval in February, 1929. But the authors were still not satisfied, and they decided to do more work on the film. They travelled to the collective farm "Giant" near Rostov-on-Don, where they shot additional footage. This material was then incorporated into the film, and it was ready for release before the spring was out.

Eisenstein and Alexandrov considered the production completed and were preparing to travel to the West when an additional delay occurred. They received a call from none other than Joseph Stalin asking them to drop in for a chat. Stalin complained that the conclusion of the film was in-appropriate. He told them, "Life must prompt you to find the correct end for the film. Before going to America, you should travel through the Soviet Union, observe everything, comprehend, it, and draw your own conclusions about everything you see. As a result of this request, a shooting crew was assembled, and they travelled through rural areas for the next two months shooting location footage. The additional work done on the film may not have greatly altered the shape of the film, but it did delay its release until October of 1929.

Why did Stalin choose to interfere personally at this point? Was it worth the added delay and expense to incorporate some more rural footage into the film? Had Stalin determined at that point to announce collectivization in the fall, and did he want the film's release delayed until that time? This is difficult to determine, but there is some interesting circumstantial evidence. The film opened on October 7, 1929, and it had been retitled Old and New so as not to be identified with the agriculture policy of the Fourteenth Party Congress. Besides opening in three Moscow theaters, the film was shown simultaneously in 52 other cities throughout the Soviet Union in areas as widely separated as Sevastopol, Archangel, and Vladivostok. This distribution indicates that it was recognized as an important and timely film which should be widely seen. More importantly, the film was designated to be shown in conjunction with an official event scheduled for October 14. This was "Collectivization Day," an all-out public relations effort to sell the idea of collectivization, and Old and New was part of this campaign. Assuming Stalin knew in May that he would be announcing collectivization in the fall, he may then have decided that a more timely premiere of the film would be advantageous.

Back in December of 1928, before the final revisions in the film had been made, Eisenstein and Alexandrov noted that of the 10 months invested in production of the film, there had been only 120 working days. They claimed that 180 days had been lost to bad weather, moving, and the "struggle for the existence of The General Line." They are not clear on what that struggle entailed. There may or may not have been factors that militated against the continuation of one film project over such a long period of time; there may have been interference from Sovkino during production. Soviet critic Viktor Shklovski recounts an incident in which Eisenstein had to contend with outside interference during production, although the subject was economic rather than political. The financial overseers of the film industry had to check on Eisenstein's progress before they would allocate additional funds for production. With an impish rebelliousness, Eisenstein concocted a "carnival film about abundance" to show the economists. Footage of plentiful harvests, cattle, sheep, and milk was thrown together and presented to the economists as representative of Eisenstein's work on the film. They were apparently impressed by Eisenstein's little joke, as they promptly approved the additional funds.

Whether there was any interference beyond this apparently routine checking is unclear. But Eisenstein was certainly aware of the debate over collectivization, and that this put his film in a potentially vulnerable position. How did he respond to the evolution of Soviet agricultural policy over the three-year period in which Old and New was in production? The answer to this lies in the changes that he made in the conception of the film, reflected in the various scripts that he and Alexandrov prepared. The script versions indicate that he maintained the same general shape and intent of the film, and most of the original scenes are retained from the earliest version. The alterations that he did make are significant, however, because they often reflect compromises that Eisenstein made with the changing political environment.

The first script version that Eisenstein and Alexandrov submitted to Sovkino in June, 1926, suggests a more dramatic depiction of the material than the finished film. The script opens by establishing an immediate tension between the peasants and the prosperous landowners.

120 million peasants—and …
A few thousand landowners.
MUCH land to the landowners—
LITTLE to the peasants.
Such cannot exist.

This situation erupts into violence as the peasants mass for an attack on the landowner's estate.

The guns of the landowners tremble nervously. The enemy freezes, staring eye to eye. Hatred to hatred.

A light breeze blows open the door.

The landowners shudder.

The peasants don't falter.

In the ensuing battle, the central character, a peasant girl named Evdokiia Ukraintseva, loses her husband, and this later inspires her to work for the formation of a collective to overcome the landowners. The battle culminates with a Cossack charge reminiscent of the Odessa steps sequence in Potemkin. In fact, this similarity to Potemkin seems to have been conscious, as if Eisenstein intended the film to be a sequel to Potemkin, which he had completed only a few months earlier. The land struggle is treated as a manifestation of the same revolutionary ferment as the Black Sea mutiny. This relationship is further illustrated by the fact that Eisenstein had originally written this very scene, an attack on a landowner's mansion, for 1905, the script from which Potemkin evolved. Also, the scene of the demonstration of the cream separator contains a direct reference to Potemkin. As the villagers wait to see whether or not the machine will function, their suspense resembles "the time of the battleship 'Potemkin' when the crowd waited for the encounter with the squadron." The success of a cream separator is as significant to the cause of revolution as the rebellion of a naval fleet.

The 1926 version was very specific on technical matters relating to agriculture. Soviet scientists are depicted working to improve breeding techniques by experimenting with flies imported from Texas, of all places, via the "Anikovski Experimental Exchange." As a result of this experimentation at a state farm, startling successes in breeding occur: "Chickens, cows, rams, guinea pigs, horses, pigs, rabbits, cats: they are perfected just as the automobile was perfected." The revolution as depicted in Potemkin progressed from maggots to the entire fleet; modernization of agriculture begins with the flies and progresses to include all forms of livestock. The prodigious rate of breeding of the collective bull, Fomka, necessitates that facilities for the calves be found. The old landowner's estate is converted.

[The Society for] the Preservation of Ancient Monuments has sent a representative. The representative removes the count's memorial wreaths while the peasants bury skeletons from the coffins in a hole: from the sarcophagus they make feeding troughs, from a glass coffin found there they make containers for milk. In the well-lit, large premises of the burial vault the young animals are quartered.

The symbols of death and waste associated with the landowners are converted into utensils for life and productivity by the cooperative.

While this version shows the Soviets importing flies from Texas, an even more important American import central to the scenario is a Fordson tractor. The cooperative applies to the Soviet government for finances to purchase a Fordson, but the bureaucracy refuses them credit. The members of the cooperative compromise their position to raise funds for the tractor by agreeing to sell shares to the kulaks. Evdokiia reacts to this threat of a concession to the kulaks by insisting that the bureaucracy deliver the tractor, and she is successful. When the tractor finally arrives, the peasants celebrate "Fordzosha" (modernization), and the "Fordson stands like a monument."

If the process outlined in this section of the scenario suggests capitalism, it is because in 1926 N.E.P., with its free market and emphasis on private property, was still in operation. But why would Eisenstein make such a specific reference to Fordson tractors and their maker Henry Ford, the epitome of capitalist ideology? Surprisingly, Henry Ford was a hero to the Soviets in the 1920's. He had done what the Soviets had longed to do by perfecting the techniques of mass production, and he was thought of throughout the U.S.S.R. as a modern revolutionary. More importantly, the Soviets were heavily dependent upon the Ford Motor Company for machine imports. Before industrialization under the First Five-Year Plan, the U.S.S.R. imported nearly all of their trucks and tractors. In 1927 eighty percent of these came from the Ford Motor Company. Of 5,700 tractors in the Ukraine, 5,520 were Fordsons. The name was so magical that the process of mass production was referred to as "Fordizatsia."

The conclusion of this scenario has a dramatic depiction of Soviet prosperity. As a result of modernization, the Soviets go into battle against backwardness: "They go to battle on the front. / FOR THE RENOVATION OF THE EARTH!" Images of war abound in the climax.

Tractors tear down fences, razing ditches, and the cross-field barriers.

FOR A COMMUNE!

They break down windmills; turn dilapidated huts inside out.

Logs stand up like a fan from the tractor power.

Individual windmills are smashed into dust.

Locusts fall back from crop-dusting attacks.

The war blazes up.

DARKNESS RETREATS!

Spiders seek refuge.

The priests retreat from the atheists.

The ravens fly away.

This violent imagery of attacks against the symbols of backwardness, from dilapidated houses to priests, again suggests the parallel with the violence and drama of revolution and the link to Potemkin. But the destruction is nicely counterpointed by images of productivity which grow out of this conflict.

Grain grows only like it can in the cinema-in two minutes! And not only grain-young pigs are transformed in only half a minute into one-thousand pound hogs, and a chick into masses of fifteen thousand.

The script concludes on a cheerful note with a shot of Michael Kalinin, ceremonial President of the Soviet Union, smiling and saying, "Eat your fill!" From the opening images of tension and violence, the scenario has progressed to a conclusion of prosperity and goodwill.

The version that Alexandrov and Eisenstein prepared after completing October was submitted to Sovkino in April, 1928. Although it has some significant alterations from the 1926 scenario, it is not by any means a completely new approach to the subject. This version is considerably more subdued and less dramatic than the 1926 script, and it is less directly related to Potemkin. The allusion to Potemkin in the cream separator scene is retained, but there is none of the open conflict of the first script which derived from the action scenes of Potemkin. The entire scene of the siege of the landowner's estate was deleted, as well as the later references to the conversion of the land-owner's estate for use by the cooperative. Eisenstein apparently no longer felt the need to establish the direct historical link between the Potemkin mutiny and the building of a socialist state. October allowed him to render the violence of revolution, which was the logical link between Potemkin and Old and New. As a result of having made October, Eisenstein was free to deal with the question of perfecting socialism without the dramatic clashes of the first version.

The cooperative still relies on imports in the 1928 version. The Texas flies again are instrumental in perfecting breeding techniques. The tractor is still clearly identified as a Fordson, and bureaucratic inertia and kulak machination figure in the problem of obtaining the tractor. Images of the battle for a "Renovated Earth" recur in the coda, but they are much more subdued than in the 1926 script.

The tractor tears down fences. It razes ditches and destroys the cross-field barriers.

FOR A COMMUNE!

They break down the windmills. Tear down old dilapidated cottages.

Logs stand up like a fan from the tractor power.

The one-legged mills and the kulak lairs are smashed to bits.

A squadron of machines cultivate the conquered earth.

There is less emphasis on destruction here. Images of war, such as the image of the priests and spiders retreating like withdrawing armies, have been deleted. The new emphasis is on machines conquering the land, but the result is the same, as images of abundance are capped by the same shot of Michael Kalinin offering a toast. Except for a slight tightening of the script, the only major changes from the 1926 scenario were associated with the toning down of images of violence.

The alterations which appear in the 1928 version were made for artistic rather than political reasons, but changes in the third version, which is dated 1929 and based on the final version of the film, suggest that Eisenstein had practical political factors in mind. Not only is the scene of the attack on the landowner's mansion missing from the final version, but many of the topical references have been deleted as well. The scene of the demonstration at the state farm remains, but there is no longer a reference to flies being imported from America. The acquisition of the tractor is considerably different. The central character, now called Marfa, still must cope with bureaucratic inaction, but there is no financial arrangement with the kulaks. Instead, Marfa and a factory worker unite to present the demand for the tractor to the bureaucrats, and when they are finally spurred into action, a Soviet factory produces the tractor. There is no reference to importing a Fordson now.

The deletion of references to Soviet dependence on American science and technology is important. By the time of the final shaping of the film, it was clear that large-scale industrialization would accompany rural collectivization. The decree establishing Machine Tractor Stations, the political bureau which would distribute machines to the villages, was handed down on June 5, 1929. When Eisenstein was performing the final editing on Old and New in the summer of 1929, he wisely decided to pay a tribute to Soviet industrialization. But the tribute is undermined; the final version of the film still contains a close-up of the tractor's label, which clearly identifies it as a Fordson. Could this be an oversight, an unconscious admission that the U.S.S.R. still was not industrialized? Or could it be another example of Eisenstein's pixyish sense of humor? It may well be that the director who made a "carnival picture" to fool some snooping economists was offering a good-natured rebellion against the politics of film-making.

Another significant change Eisenstein made was in the conclusion. Perhaps as a result of Stalin's request, the final scenes of abundance were omitted. Gone also is the shot of Michael Kalinin offering a toast. After seeing how the winds of Soviet politics could change, Eisenstein must have recognized that too topical a reference could prove to be embarrassing later on. If Trotski could be declared persona non grata, could not Kalinin also? Since Kalinin had risen from a peasant to become President of the Soviet Union, an essentially symbolic post, his function in the script had been to represent the unity of the peasantry with the government. Without his image in the final version, Eisenstein had to devise another coda which accomplished the same end. This was done by the scene of Marfa, now a tractor driver, encountering the former tractor driver who has become a farmer. This was an homage to Chaplin's A Woman of Paris, but it was also an image of the unity of purpose under the new Soviet system.

Old and New could have been a direct, unambiguous propaganda film, or it could have been an example of the stagnation of the "girl meets tractor" films which characterized many Soviet films. Eisenstein, however, attacked the seemingly mundane subject of farming with all his creative intensity, and he sought to elevate his subject through a complex and dynamic treatment. Ironically, his research into Russian rural life taught him that this so-called mundane subject was very complex indeed. The difficulty lies in drawing all the cultural and historical threads together, and Eisenstein achieved this through a carefully worked out thematic structure. A brief discussion of theme indicates that elements of traditional Russian culture, ancient myths, and tenets of modern Marxism are subtly woven together in the finished film.

Old and New opens with long shots of the most important element in the film, the land. The great Russian plain, "Mother Russia," represents the central myth of Russian civilization, and spiritual attachment to the soil is a unifying force in Russian life. But we are shown agricultural methods which destroy this unity as the land is divided into individual peasant holdings. Division occurs within the family as well, as brothers split their inheritance to the point of sawing their father's house in half. The asymmetrical images of the fences dividing the land and the closeups of the fences with their criss-crossing wooden posts suggest chaos as well. Within the context of this fragmentation, we are introduced to Marfa, the village woman who is determined to overcome these anachronistic practices. Marfa Lapkina has many of the traditional qualities of the earth mother figure; she is physically strong, and the vitality that she exhibits in her struggles identifies her as a life force. But she soon learns that determination is insufficient without the assistance of modernized methods.

In response to a drought, villagers form a religious procession to pray for rain, but the scene depicts the inadequacy of spiritualism and ritual in the face of material hardship. The drought, representing death and sterility, and the procession to counter it take on an ambiguously sexual flavor. The procession culminates in a prayer in which the participants display unusual passion. The tempo of the editing increases with the passion of the participants, suggesting a religious orgy. The marchers end their frantic prayer in a state of exhaustion, and their dishevelment lends them the appearance of having joined in some huge debauchery. The drought continues, however, and the frustration of the processioners implies the experience of sex without pleasure, or, more importantly, sex without fertility. The scene contains another interesting ambiguity. The icon of the Madonna and Child is intercut with shots of a lamb suffering from thirst. The lamb image could simply be a comment on the poor condition of Russian livestock, or it could represent a parody of the gullibility of the processioners who follow the dictates of the church like sheep. But the juxtaposition of the icon and the lamb is given added significance by the fact that the lamb is the traditional symbol of Christ. Perhaps the presence of the lamb intimates that the suffering of the peasants may result in a form of redemption. But the attack on mysticism that runs through the scene implies that this redemption must be material, not spiritual.

Many of these religious and erotic elements are further dealt with in the following scene in which the cream separator is introduced to the village. The cream separator is treated with near religious reverence. Eisenstein has stated that the handling of the separator is an allusion to the Holy Grail, the symbol of spiritual perfection. But in Old and New the Holy Grail surrogate is functional, a machine which is essential to the production of butter. The theatrical unveiling of the separator, and the fact that it dazzles the peasants, suggests an association with church iconography or art. When the machine is operated, we again see ritual, but, in contrast to the elaborate religious rites of the procession, the ritual here is work. The stylized cranking of the machine handle becomes a substitute for prayer, and the important theme of the replacement of religion by technology emerges. Recurring sexual implications also counter the scene of the religious procession. The prominence of the machine's spout (and Marfa's obvious admiration of it) along with the tempo of the editing give the scene a very erotic tone. Shots of the flow of the cream from the spout are intercut with shots of a fountain, a traditional symbol of the source of life. Thus the sexuality of this scene results in fecundity, and it serves as a foil to the sterility of the scene of the procession. Labor and technology are depicted as life-giving, while spirituality is useless.

The importance of the communal bull, Fomka, reinforces the theme of fertility. Marfa's rather Freudian dream of the bull looming up over a herd of cows is an image of this obsession with reproduction, as if Fomka was expected to render a Stakhanovite performance as a breeder. The wedding in which Fomka is mated with a cow is a comic, pagan celebration of life which signals the beginning of the cooperative dairy herd. When Fomka is poisoned by the kulaks, the villagers again revert to paganism as they carry out mysterious rituals in an effort to save him. Eisenstein intercuts the rituals with gloomy shots of skulls which symbolize the inevitability of death and the futility of trying to conquer death through mysticism. Death is conquered through the act of reproduction, however, as Fomka's offspring survive to replenish the herd.

The harvest scene is another example of the synthesis of tradition and modernization. The line of men moving through the field cutting wheat with their scythes recalls the famous harvest scene in Anna Karenina, and the harvesters seem to experience the same exhilaration of physical labor as Tolstoi's Levin. But a rivalry develops between two of the harvesters, an enormous man and a smaller, more energetic youth. As they race against one another, their competition becomes increasingly heated and they nearly come to blows. Eisenstein presents this rivalry as a conscious allusion to the ancient David and Goliath legend. Their competition is interrupted when their attention is drawn to a mowing machine which cuts wheat at such a rate that their dispute seems petty and is forgotten. Machinery is a unifying force, and David and Goliath join hands in homage to technology.

The theme of the beauty of technology culminates with the introduction of the tractor to the cooperative. The inertia of bureaucracy is satirized in grotesque images of huge typewriters, pencil sharpeners, and preening secretaries. The ultimate image of bureaucratic sloth is the official signature which is rambling and chaotic. When Marfa and a factory worker confront the bureaucrats and incite them to accelerated action, the sequence is punctuated by the stamp of an official seal, which is an abrupt and precise depiction of administrative action. It also introduces the circle image, which dominates the last scenes of the film. The circle is usually pictured in various close-ups of wheels. This is important, as the wheel, the first great technological invention, contains the implication of movement and progress. It is also significant that the circle is the traditional symbol of unity and perfection. From the chaotic criss-crossing fenceposts of the opening scenes, the imagery of the film has progressed to the symmetry of the circle, suggesting the progression of the peasants toward unity. Since the circle is also a Christian symbol, this reinforces the theme of the supplanting of religion by technology; production becomes the new peasant religion. The role of the tractor as a unifying force is also demonstrated by the fact that, while the horses panic and scatter the village wagons, the tractor is able to pull all of the carts in a long line. The train of carts symbolically unites the village behind the power of the tractor. Finally, the tractor smashes down the fences which have divided the Russian plain. The imagery returns to the original symbol of the film, "Mother Russia," free of barriers and the fundamental element of unity in Russian life.

The integration of tradition and modernism in Old and New is achieved in a structure suggestive of a Marxian dialectic. Ancient Slavic culture (thesis) encounters Marxism (antithesis) to create a collective farm (synthesis). The symbol patterns which emerge in the film indicate Eisenstein's fascination with peasant culture and mythology. Although he may not have been the closet Christian that Marie Seton suggests, he was certainly interested in the importance of religion in rural Russia. His intense research in preparation for the film and his interest in anthropological works such as J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough indicate that he was interested in the mythological roots of religious doctrine. Eisenstein saw the religious symbols in Old and New as archetypes, and through them he hoped to penetrate to the subconscious of his audience. He and Alexandrov wrote that their film was a call for a "new man"; they were working to develop "the collectivized man and the collectivizing man." By using ancient archetypal elements, Eisenstein sought to make his modernistic, Marxist message more meaningful to his audience.

Eisenstein had made a propaganda film, but his fascination with the ambiguities of his subject and his complex presentation transcended the conventions of propaganda. A cubistic presentation of a cream separator, a subjective depiction of a bull's orgasm, a slapstick satire of bureaucracy, and a light-hearted parody of the American Western film in the scene of the tractor's wagon train are all evidence of an artist who refused to be restricted by his subject matter. Eisenstein seemed to enjoy raising the experiences of farm life to abstractions. He wrote of "emotive structures applied to non-emotive material" in reference to Old and New. Hence, a cream separator supplants the Holy Grail as a means to perfection. He has combined elements of the documentary and the fiction film, drama and slapstick with the same subtlety with which he had integrated themes of old and new. This mixing of genres and styles represents the ambitions of an artist who would not comply with the normal expectations of what constitutes a good propaganda film.

How then, was the film received? Critics responded favourably. The review in Pravda was enthusiastic; it spoke of "the great mastery, the tremendous emotion, the sweep, and the pulsating tempo of life.…" Mordaunt Hall, in The New York Times, praised the film as "an enlightening cinematic study." But it is difficult to tell how the Soviet public responded to Old and New. It ran for only a week in the Moscow theaters where it opened. Marie Seton reported that a screening of Old and New for the Red Army Club at the time of release produced a negative response. If this evidence is indicative of the reaction of the larger Soviet public, it may be because the experimentalism of Old and New was disconcerting to its audience. Eisenstein's abstract and episodic film may have seemed out of place in its association with "Collectivization Day" propaganda.

Or more likely, the film was once again victimized by the forces of history. Not long after Old and New was released, it became an obsolete depiction of collectivization. Collectivization was undertaken, but it had none of the utopian flavor of Eisenstein's film. Rather than peasants voluntarily joining collective farms after seeing the benefits of Soviet methods, they were forced into collectives by Stalin's rapid and drastic measures. Bolshevik agents sent into the countryside to enforce the policy used harsh punitive measures against those who hesitated to give up their private claims. The peasants then resisted Soviet tactics by slaughtering their own livestock and wrecking property in outbursts of violence reminiscent of ancient peasant and serf rebellions under czarism. Also, Stalin's decision to "eliminate the kulaks as a class" was carried out via the order forbidding kulaks to join collective farms. Their property was confiscated and they were sent to forced labor camps or executed. By the spring of 1930, the turmoil in the countryside had grown so serious that Stalin had to issue a warning against "overzealousness" on the part of those executing collectivization policy. But the resistance continued through the next several years, and the cost in human lives was staggering. Famine, executions, and labor camp conditions took a human toll which, it has been estimated, ran into millions. The harsh reality of collectivization must have made Old and New look like a cruel joke for contemporary Soviet citizens.

Eisenstein could not have anticipated the consequences of Stalin's collectivization policies. Eisenstein had sought in Old and New to harmonize the dichotomies of Russian life between the Westernizer and the Slavophile, the city and the country, the state and the peasant. To Eisenstein, the collective farm represented the synthesis of the old institution of the peasant commune and the modern methods of Soviet rationalism. But the reaction to forced collectivization demonstrated that the animosities were too deeply imbedded in Russia to be overcome through one film. For Eisenstein, the political complications that he encountered in the making and release of Old and New were a foretaste of the difficulties that he and other Soviet film-makers would have to face in the later Stalin years.