Cinema of the Soviet Union

The cinema of the Soviet Union, not to be confused with "Cinema of Russia" despite films in the Russian language being predominant in the body of work so described, includes films produced by the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history, albeit they were all regulated by the central government in Moscow. Most prolific in their republican films, after the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, and, to a lesser degree, Lithuania, Byelorussia and Moldavia. At the same time, the nation's film industry, which was fully nationalized throughout most of the country's history, was guided by philosophies and laws propounded by the monopoly Soviet Communist Party which introduced a new view on the cinema, socialist realism, which was different from the one before or after the existence of the Soviet Union.

Upon the establishment of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (RSFSR) on November 7, 1917 (although the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did not officially come into existence until December 30, 1922), what had formerly been The Russian Empire began quickly to come under the domination of a Soviet reorganization of all its institutions. From the outset, the leaders of this new state held that film would be the most ideal propaganda tool for the Soviet Union because of its widespread popularity among the established citizenry of the new land. Vladimir Lenin, in fact, reportedly even declared it the most important medium for educating the masses in the ways, means and successes of Communism, a position which was later echoed by Joseph Stalin.

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