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Oleg Riabov
Americanness." This theme was actively exploited in various forms of propaganda;
it was important to emphasise that profligacy was an inherent and regular part of
the American way of life. Soviet movies had to demonstrate, apart from the chastity
of ‘us’, the profligacy of ‘them’. Meeting on the Elbe depicted the American occupa¬
tion zone as a den of vice. The Soviet audience’s moral sentiment was shocked by
an announcement at the entrance to an American soldiers’ club, Paradise: “Girls of
any nationality are welcome! You must provide evidence of political reliability and
an STD certificate”.
One more dimension of representations of the enemy’s sexuality was the
exploitation of the motif of the honey trap, i.e. using sexual seduction in espionage.
In Early Cold War cinema the idea that sexual seduction was a weapon in the
hands of the class enemy was most fully expressed in female characters from
several movies, for example in Meeting on the Elbe Sherwood tried to seduce Major
Kuzmin. His rejection of the beautiful spy-journalist in favour of the love of Vera,
a Russian girl from the Volga River region, allowed the audience to believe in the
superiority of Soviet femininity over American femininity.
Two Americas
‘The images of the enemies created by two propaganda machines has been termed
“mirror images” in academic literature since the 1960s (Frank 1967: 26). Soviet
representations of the United States can be seen as somewhat parallel to the image
of the Soviets in American Cold War cinema, which also tried to depict the gender
order of the primary enemy, first, as contrary to its own, secondly, as unnatural
and opposite to human nature, and thirdly, as an inevitable consequence of its
unnatural social and political order. At the same time one should take into account
the differences in the identity politics of the two superpowers reflected in cinema.
‘The very essence of Soviet ideology, with its prioritisation of the class principle over
the national principle, implied the creation of images of not only ‘bad Americans’,
but also ‘good Americans —including communists, representatives of the working
class, ‘the champions of peace’, and African Americans. In The Russian Question
Smith, declaring himself a successor of Lincoln and Roosevelt, spoke about “two
different Americas”, blaming his opponents, warmongers from Wall Street, for
being the enemies not only of Russia but also of America.
In compliance with the idea of ‘two Americas’ films showed female characters’
biographies, social origins, political beliefs, and social status. For instance, a ‘good
American’, Ann Bedford, was a farmer’s daughter; among the ‘bad American
women’ one can see female spies, corrupt journalists, and wives of capitalists and
militarists. These two groups of Americans are also different with regard to gender
norms, with the ‘good’ American women resembling the Soviet female characters
in this aspect. In particular, they tried to free themselves from the rules of the
° On the issue of sexuality in picturing ‘us’ in Stalinist cinema see Haynes 2003: 82-83.