Esfir Shub

Esfir Shub (Russian: Эсфи́рь Ильи́нична Шуб; 16 March 1894, Surazh, Russian Empire – 21 September 1959, Moscow, Soviet Union), also referred to as Esther Il'inichna Shub, was a pioneering Soviet filmmaker and editor in both the mainstream and documentary fields. She was one of few women to play a significant role behind the scenes in the Soviet film industry. She is best known for her trilogy of films, Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), The Great Road (1927), and The Russia of Nicholas II and Leo Tolstoy (1928). Shub is credited as the creator of compilation film.

Shub was born, March 16, 1894, into a Jewish family of landowners in the town of Surazhe, a small town in the Chernigov region of the Ukraine, which is now the Brianskaya province of the southwest part of the Russian Federation. Her father, Ilya Roshal, was a pharmacist. Shub’s mother died when she was a young child and was also known to have one brother. Shub had a relatively privileged upbringing, which allowed her to travel to Moscow before the revolution.

By the mid-1910s, Shub had settled in Moscow to begin her study of literature at the Institute for Women’s Higher Education. There she got involved in the revolutionary fervor emerging amongst young university students.

After moving to Moscow, Shub became involved in the Soviet avant-garde world, specifically in constructivist theatre. In 1918, after working as Vsevolod Meyerhold’s private secretary in the Soviet administration at the head office of the TEO Theatre Department of the Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Education), she began collaborating with the stage director Vsevolod Meyerhold and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky on several theatrical projects. During this time she also became involved with the Left Front of the Arts (LEF) group.

In 1922, Shub began her film career at Goskino, the major Soviet state-owned film company. There she worked as an editor, in charge of censoring imported foreign films for domestic distribution, rendering these films “suitable” for Soviet audiences. Here she worked alongside Sergei Eisenstein, re-editing films such as the Soviet release of Fritz Lang’s Dr Mabuse.

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