Open AccessCivil War as Musical Comedy: The Representation of the Ukrainian Revolution in the Soviet Film Wedding in Malinovka (1967)
Author(s) -
Olga Pressitch
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of european studies/australian and new zealand journal of european studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1837-2147
pISSN - 1836-1803
DOI - 10.30722/anzjes.vol5.iss2.15142
Subject(s) - ukrainian , musical , comedy , burlesque , trickster , popularity , literature , art , russian culture , gender studies , history , sociology , political science , law , linguistics , philosophy
This article explains the continued popularity in Russia of the 1967 Soviet film Wedding in Malinovka by analyzing its reliance on the traditional Russian cultural stereotype of Ukraine embedded in the burlesque style of kotliarevshchyna. The threat that the Ukrainian Revolution historically represented to Soviet Russian identity is normalised in the film, as well as in the 1936 eponymous operetta on which it is based, by framing it as an ethnic musical sitcom with dances. Although the two main yokels of the musical hail from a long line of Ukrainian and Jewish characters of popular theatre, both are also deeply ambivalent: one is a trickster who suddenly embraces the Bolshevik cause, while the other is the funniest and least threatening villain in Soviet film.