Adaptation Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 205–220
doi:10.1093/adaptation/apw003
Advance Access publication 10 March 2016
Interpreting History: Meaning Production for the
Russian Revolution
FREDERICK H. WHITE*
Abstract Using Darwinian language, scholars have recently asserted that narratives about the past
must adapt to their present environment, that only through adaptation to new environments does
a narrative continue to be retold. In 1906, Leonid Andreev published the short story `The Governor'
in which he attempted to plumb the psychological depths of a government official who has given
an order to fire on innocent protesters. Andreev's story was a direct response to the political assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich and was read within this context. In 1928, Iakov
Protazanov filmed The White Eagle based on Andreev's story. Well beyond the revolutionary years,
Protazanov's film was made at the beginning of Joseph Stalin's Cultural Revolution. Nearly sixty years
later, Andreev's story was once again transported to the movie screen by Vladimir Makeranets. The
political and economic restructuring implemented by Mikhail Gorbachev and the resulting disruption
to Soviet society provided Makeranets' The Governor (1991) with new meaning and interpretations of
Russia's revolutionary past. By examining Andreev's source text and the two cinematic interpretations that followed, we can make certain assertions about the way in which cultural production is
influenced by radical social change. In this case, the heritable character of political revolution means
that filmmakers have been compelled to renegotiate the Russian concept of revolution: a re-evaluation of the past that will make Andreev's `The Governor' relevant for the foreseeable future.
Keywords Leonid Andreev, Iakov Protazanov, Vladimir Makeranets, Russian revolution, historical narrative, film adaptation.
A recent collection of scholarly essays has asserted that narratives about the past are not
the sole preserve of historiography. Defne Ersin Tutan and Laurence Raw have argued
that works about the past should be approached as a form of adaptation, as narratives
that interpret the past while influenced by contemporary concerns. Using Darwinian
language, Ersin Tutan and Raw have asserted that the narratives about the past that do
not adapt to their present environment are doomed and will eventually cease to exist; that
only through evolution and adaptation to new environments does a narrative continue
to be relevant and to be retold. Therefore, the act of interpreting the past should not be
understood as the domain of historians alone, but as a (metaphorically) never-ending process of adaptation for writers, filmmakers, and others, who engage with the past to create
visual or textual narratives (7–23). Such an argument is relevant because much scholarly
energy has been expended defining the historical narrative and, more recently, the process of film adaptation. In truth, both are involved in meaning production in similar
ways. The following essay explores a fictional narrative based on real events that has been
adapted twice for cinema audiences. In so doing, an assertion is made that historians,
*Department of Languages and Cultures, Utah Valley University. E-mail: [email protected].
© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please email: [email protected]
205
206 FREDERICK H. WHITE
writers, and filmmakers transform events in similar ways in order to provide meaning for
the past, perspectives on the present, and hypotheses about the future.
Hayden White has argued that historians attempt to establish a plausible explanation for
events for which there is evidence: to provide a ‘simulacrum of the structure and process of
real events’. Using narrative tropes common to literature (Romance, Tragedy, Comedy, and
Satire), the historian offers meaning for the ‘accurate imitation’ of real events. The word is
italicized because even White has recognized that this differentiation preferred during the
nineteenth century between ‘events that happened’ and ‘events created by a narrator’ was
tenuous (2). After all, what distinguished the retelling of events by a literary figure such as
Leonid Andreev and by a historian such as Mikhail Pokrovskii? For White, the distinction
has hinged on the ‘interpretation’ of the events that occurred. ‘The facts might be truthfully
set forth and the interpretation of them misguided’ (3). Yet, the interpretation of events will
be essential when examining a story based on real events by Andreev that has been adapted
twice into film. Each version, whether literary or cinematic, has provided a different interpretation, each of which was influenced by real events. In this instance, the focus is on how
new events impinge upon the interpretation of history, especially during periods of radical
social change, how the events of 1905 were depicted, and how the cinematic adaptations of
1928 and 1991 reflected the evolving interpretations of history. The resulting assertion is that
historiography and film adaptation are involved in a similar process of meaning production.
This assertion is more readily apparent due to Russia’s regular periods of upheaval
that recast the cause and effect of its own historical narrative. Soviet cinema played a
substantial role in creating and disseminating this evolving narrative. Vladimir Lenin
is often quoted as having said that cinema was the most important of all of the arts,
mainly because of its potential for disseminating a consistent political message to a
largely illiterate populace. In so doing, Soviet cinema provided meaning for past events
and for present situations in order to depict an ideal communist state in the not-sodistant future. Within this context, a filmmaker’s ability to adapt to the evolving interpretations of history did seem like a necessity for survival.
At the beginning of December 1904, student demonstrators were violently dispersed
by the police in Moscow. Eight students were killed; four more would die from their
wounds, and nearly 200 suffered significant injuries. The students had been warned by
officials not to gather and to demonstrate, but the organizers had posted a public notice
that read: ‘We will demonstrate, and if you beat us for this, we will then [place] a death
sentence on Trepov and Sergei’ (Anisimov 252 ff. 4). Following the violent reaction of
the government, a death sentence was, in fact, publicly pronounced by the Socialist
Revolutionaries (SRs) for Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich and the Chief of Police
Dmitrii Trepov. At this point in Russian history, a vicious cycle of political repression
and terrorist reprisals was the accepted reality, and the Russian people were becoming
ever more defiant in their opposition to the Tsarist government.
On 9 January 1905, Father Gapon led a group of St. Petersburg workers and their families
toward the Winter Palace to present a petition to the Tsar. As this group of more than 50,000
reached the Palace Square, they were met by Cossack horse guards. When the crowd disregarded orders to disband, troops fired on them, killing hundreds of men, women, and children. Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich, Military Governor of St. Petersburg, claimed
no direct responsibility for the massacre, but was implicated by public opinion all the same.
Interpreting History 207
A month after the massacre in St. Petersburg and 2 months after the violent dispersal
of protesters in Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich was assassinated. On the
morning of 17 February 1905, Ivan Kaliaev, a member of the SRs, threw a bomb into
Sergei Aleksandrovich’s lap as he was leaving the Kremlin in an open carriage. For his
supposed role in the repression of the student demonstrators in Moscow, the Grand
Duke paid with his life (Figure 1).1
In the third number of the journal Truth (Pravda) for 1906, Andreev published the short
story ‘The Governor’ (Gubernator) in which he attempted to plumb the psychological depths
of a government official who has given an order to fire on innocent protestors and, as a
result, expects to be assassinated as lawful retribution for his actions. Andreev’s story was
a direct response to several political assassinations, especially that of Grand Duke Sergei
Aleksandrovich, and was read within this context.2 In 1928, Iakov Protazanov filmed The
White Eagle (Belyi orel) based on Andreev’s story; filmed within a dramatically different political reality. Protazanov altered the original text in significant ways. Well beyond the revolutionary years, Protazanov’s film was made following the relative prosperity of the New Economic
Policy (NEP) period, at the beginning of Joseph Stalin’s Cultural Revolution that accompanied the First Five Year Plan. Nearly 60 years later, Andreev’s story was once again transported to cinema theatres by Vladimir Makeranets. The political and economic restructuring
Figure 1. Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich.
208 FREDERICK H. WHITE
implemented by Mikhail Gorbachev and the resulting disruption to Soviet society provided
Makeranets’ The Governor (Gubernator) with new meaning and interpretations of the past.
By examining Andreev’s source text and the two cinematic interpretations that followed,
we can make certain assertions about the way in which cultural production is influenced by
radical social change: about how the interpretation of historical events continues to evolve.
French literary theorist Gérard Genette has argued that a hypotext might be transformed
into a hypertext (or hypertexts) through the means of either simple or direct transformations
(4–10). Robert Stam builds on Genette’s theoretical language reasoning that film adaptations of literary texts are involved in this dialogical process in which the hypotext generates
cinematic hypertexts (5). This assertion suggests a postmodernist consideration of each film
as only a reading of the hypotext that is influenced by the creator’s present reality. In a similar
fashion, film scholar Fredric Jameson contends that films that maintain historical authenticity create intertexts that transform the historical narration into commentary on the present
(18–21; 280–84). In each case, a version of ‘The Governor’ was created as a reaction to
political and social upheaval.3 Andreev produced a hypotext in response to his social and
political reality that led to the revolutions of 1917. Protazanov recalled the revolutionary
events of 1905 as Stalin reoriented Soviet society toward an authoritative model of ‘socialism in one country’, while Makeranets identified parallels between the last years of imperial
Russia and the collapse of the Soviet Union in order to create a second cinematic hypertext.
Exploring the double coding of these texts accentuates the ways in which each new evaluation of the past established novel interpretations of the creator’s present.
Dudley Andrew has argued that in cases like these, ‘the practice of adaptation inevitably
opens onto historiography’, returning once again to the distinctions made by White (191).
Robert Burgoyne has suggested that film plays a role in creating national identity, therefore
in the Soviet Union, where history and identity were in a constant process of re-evaluation,
it would be expected that the two adaptations of Andreev’s hypotext captured what Sara
Brinch has called ‘fidelity to the spirit’ rather than depicting the ‘historical truth’ (239). The
story by Andreev certainly articulated the zeitgeist concerning political assassinations and
the ongoing political upheaval of 1905. Protazanov’s hypertext was influenced by a need to
avoid associating the Bolsheviks with political assassinations and extreme political actions.
Finally, Makeranets depicted the instability of perestroika with references to a similarly chaotic period in which positive and negative political actors could not be easily defined. Each
offered his own interpretation of history, one that scrutinized the favourable variations of
the past to make sense of the present in order to make a determination about the future.
Arguably then, historiography and film adaptation are engaged in the same meaning production, which is the focus of this study.
ANDREEV’S ‘THE GOVERNOR’
In June 1904, the daily newspaper where Andreev worked ceased to exist after a prolonged period of financial difficulties. This meant that Andreev now had to earn his
livelihood solely as a creative writer. The heady times of his initial literary success gave
way to a period of significant political upheaval and personal difficulties. At the outset
of his career, Andreev had associated his literary persona with Maksim Gor’kii and the
politically minded writers of the Wednesday literary circle. Striking the pose of a student
political agitator, he had adopted the peasant workman’s blouse, high boots, and the long
Interpreting History 209
waistcoat. Boris Zaitsev remembered: ‘Among the “progressive” writers it was fashionable to dress outrageously, so that our appearance would negate everything bourgeois’
(131).4 Andreev’s political plays, To the stars (K zvezdam) and Savva, as well as his antiwar story ‘Red Laugh’ (Krasnyi smekh), about the horrors of the Russo–Japanese war,
further solidified his anti-establishment voice of rebellion, but also drew the ire of those
who supported the monarchy. The literary brand that had initially propelled him to the
forefront of social and political debates quickly became a liability for the young author.5
In December 1904, Andreev and eight other Moscow writers signed their names
to a letter protesting the violent dispersal of students earlier that month. The letter
stated that police were positioned in advance with the intent to scatter the students
using extreme force. Even as the protesters fled, they were pursued by the police and
beaten without regard for gender or age. These well-known Moscow writers wished to
give voice to the deep dissatisfaction that the majority of the public felt for the actions
of the government administration (Anisimov 251). On 9 February 1905, Andreev was
arrested for allowing a meeting of the Social Democratic Labour Party to be held in his
apartment. Once released from prison, Andreev felt threatened by the Black Hundreds,
loyalist gangs supporting the autocracy, due to his revolutionary works. For a time, he
was protected by students from a possible attack by these loyalist thugs. At this same
time, Andreev wrote to his friend Vinkentii Veresaev that Russia had most certainly
begun on the path toward revolution. The final proof of this seemed to be the events in
St. Petersburg and the murder of Grant Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich (Veresaev 393). In
October, Andreev completed ‘The Governor’ and then took his wife and son abroad in
hopes of avoiding violent political reprisals from the Black Hundreds.
Andreev’s story begins 15 days after the Governor has ordered troops to fire on protestors. For 3 weeks, workmen of a suburban factory had been on strike and had then
decided to march to the Governor along with their wives and children to make their
demands. The Governor had tried to speak to the crowd, but as they became more and
more violent, he was forced to give the signal to disperse the angry mob. The soldiers shot
twice into the crowd and forty-seven people were killed, including nine women and three
children. Driven by guilt and curiosity, the Governor first visited the engine-house where
the dead were collected and then the hospital where the wounded were recovering.
Following the incident, the Governor was haunted by his decision and it slowly dawned
upon him that the people might seek their own retribution, especially once the Chief of
Police provided him with bodyguards. The Governor tried to discuss the incident with
his son, showing his remorse and arguing that the victims were fellow countrymen, but
his son responded that the Governor had performed his duty to preserve law and order.
It was during this conversation that the Governor stated for the first time that he knew
that he would be killed by his own countrymen ‘in the name of Russia’ (Andreev 113).
This notion of retribution was reiterated some time later when the Governor discussed his impending death with a peasant who confirmed that it will be ‘the community’ that kills him in reprisal, in particular, for the slaughter of children (Andreev 118).
Among the more educated inhabitants of the town, the Governor was liked and they
did not favour an execution in this case. It was the women, however, who were uniform
in their desire for vengeance. Rumours of the Governor’s death continued among the
inhabitants, ever more certain of the lawfulness of this punishment.
210 FREDERICK H. WHITE
A deluge of letters came to the Governor, some supporting his actions, but most
reviling him as a murderer. Over time, the Governor began isolating himself in anticipation of his death. He did not fear his foretold demise and continued each day to
take a 2-hour walk through the town, often without bodyguards, who had grown frustrated with his lack of concern for his own safety. Finally, when on one of his walks,
the Governor was approached by two men. Realizing that this was the moment, the
Governor waited patiently as his assassin fumbled in his coat to draw his firearm. Three
quick shots in rapid succession were fired and the Governor’s dead body remained in
the intersection until police agents and people from the neighbourhood arrived.
At the time of its publication, Andreev’s story received very mixed reviews. Gor’kii
argued that the story was too long and not successful in achieving what Andreev had
set out to write. Andreev, himself, agreed that the story had turned out badly (Andreev
521–22). He had intended to describe the Governor’s psychological state in anticipation
of his own death, but in fact, paid very little attention to this aspect, instead building the
argument that the Governor’s murder would be a justified act of social vengeance harkening to the Old Testament Law of Retaliation (an eye for an eye). As Richard J. Evans
has argued, historians of early modern times often ‘saw their function as chronicling
the working out of God’s purposes in the world’ (13). In so doing, history was meant to
describe the forces of good and evil with a clear moral component, intended to illustrate
crucial lessons for human behaviour. As a result, it is not surprising that when Andreev
was unable to successfully plumb the psychological depths of his character, he defaulted
to a causality informed by biblical themes. In fact, Andreev wrote several more stories
about the revolutionary movement around this same time, stories that were more expertly
executed: ‘Marseilles’ (Marsel’eza), ‘So it Was’ (Tak bylo), and ‘Darkness’ (T’ma). Even so,
it was this story that was chosen in 1928 for adaptation for cinema audiences.
PROTAZANOV’S THE WHITE EAGLE
For Andreev, the assassination of the Governor was a confirmation of lex talionis as
expressed in Exodus 24:21. The Governor was punished for his transgression against
humanity and the moral law that governs society. Protazanov, working in a very different political and social milieu, placed guilt for violence against the common man on the
Orthodox Church, the nobility, merchants, and the imperial government—including the
Tsar himself. Even more significant, the Governor was not assassinated by revolutionaries or even by disgruntled citizens, but by a police agent who had been discarded by the
Chief of Police. Unlike Andreev’s moralistic tale, Protazanov kept the workers and revolutionaries completely out of what turned out to be the dirty business of the ruling elite.
Protazanov had been one of the most prominent film directors in prerevolutionary
Russia, although during the Civil War, he had spent 3 years in Berlin and Paris making
successful films for European audiences. In 1923, Protazanov was persuaded to return to
Moscow and soon after, made his first Soviet film Aelita, an adaptation of Aleksei Tolstoi’s
novel. In the 6 years that Protazanov worked for the Mezhrabpom-Rus studio, he made ten
silent films, including The White Eagle in 1928.6 These were successful films that ran in large
theatres and made a profit for the studio. Denise Youngblood has argued that Protazanov,
unlike his avant-garde contemporaries, was ‘pragmatic, efficient, and discreet’, which
served him well while working in the politically volatile Soviet movie industry (105–06).
Interpreting History 211
Upon his return to Moscow, Protazanov learned a valuable lesson from Aelita after the
film received sustained attacks from film and social critics for being ‘ideologically unprincipled’. It was suggested that the scriptwriters were ‘alien to the working class’ and it was
believed that the film itself was ‘too Western’ and did not reflect the hardships of the Civil
War years (Youngblood 110). Protazanov realized that he would have to adapt to the new
Soviet reality and make films that were not only aesthetically, but now politically pleasing.
His next few films were successful with audiences, but he found it difficult to satisfy the ever
changing political demands of the period. For example, three of his films were attacked when
the Mezhrabpom studio came under fire in 1927 on the eve of the Party Conference on
Cinema Affairs (Youngblood 115–16). Although Protazanov had been working during the
relatively prosperous NEP period, the political atmosphere began to change rapidly with the
announcement of the First Five Year plan, which was accompanied by a Cultural Revolution
that Sheila Fitzpatrick has called ‘violent and iconoclastic’ (34). It was a movement of young
proletarian communists against Old Bolshevik intellectuals and the bourgeois intelligentsia.
The Bolshevik Party had been an alliance of factions, but with Stalin’s eventual rise
to power, the tone and tenor of political discourse had dramatically changed. Instead
of constructing a society in which classes and the state would eventually disappear,
Stalin was organizing an all-powerful dictatorial state that would preserve the existing class system and implement a period of forced industrialization. As Moshe Lewin
has argued, ‘It is thus possible to speak here of a break, not only with the pre-revolutionary period of Leninism but also with the very different post-revolutionary version,
which proposed an authoritarian political system, a dictatorship, but which nevertheless
aspired to acquire a broad and varied social base […]’ (207).
As a result of this changing political landscape, Protazanov was seen as an embodiment of the compromises of the NEP period—especially after returning from abroad
to work in a semi-commercial film studio. As Ian Christie has argued, Protazanov was
viewed by many as at best an opportunist, and at worst the purveyor of ‘socialist poison’. It was during this politically volatile period that Protazanov decided to make his
adaptation of Andreev’s ‘The Governor’. Jay Leyda has suggested that Protazanov’s
last three silent films were all experimental in one way or the other. In particular, The
White Eagle was ‘the first Soviet film to show an official of the Tsar’s government in a
moral dilemma, a conflict between his moral conscience and his official duty—and the
film, therefore, was accused of misplacing its sympathies’ (280).
Protazanov’s film begins with images of St. Petersburg: The Bronze Horseman, the
Alexander Column, the Monument to Nicholas I, The Peter and Paul Fortress, the
Monument to Alexander II—all symbols of the Romanov dynasty and imperial power.
In the first scene, the Governor (Vasilii Kachalov) visits his superior in the capital, played
by Vsevolod Meyerkhold, and is instructed to end the strike of the factory workers that
has lingered for 2 weeks. The Governor is told that he should not refrain from using
force and then is exhorted by the phrase: ‘The regime is resolute’. After the Governor
has returned from the capital, the striking workers march to his residence. The crowd
becomes unruly and is driven back by mounted soldiers. The Governor is reminded
several times that his white handkerchief will act as the signal for armed intervention. On the balcony, the Governor addresses the crowd, telling them that he will not
tolerate illegal activities. A few workers throw stones at him, incited by one worker in
212 FREDERICK H. WHITE
particular. There is a moment of hesitation when the Governor holds his handkerchief
aloft, the soldiers raise their rifles and the crowd draws back in disbelief, certain that
the Governor is only trying to frighten them. Without further provocation, however,
the Governor gives the sign and the soldiers fire upon the crowd. Kachalov, playing the
Governor, would later remember, ‘The entire reaction of the governor to the shooting
of the workers I tried to reveal, not as the reaction of a human being, but as the reaction
of a statesman, [who] having shot the workers physically, also realizes that he has shot
not [just] them, but his own self, his [ruling] class, his own political order’ (68).
As the Governor contemplates what he has done, a poor mother grieves for her
dead child. In a series of flashbacks that always begin with the inter-title ‘How did this
happen?’, Protazanov’s characters reflect on their lives just before the incident. The
Governor is helped on with his uniform by his adoring daughter, who scents the handkerchief that will be used to signal the soldiers in a touch of irony. The grieving mother
places a cap on her child’s head and listens to the factory workers debating whether they
should appeal to the Governor. Protazanov decided to focus his cinematic attention on
one particular mother and her personal loss, rather than leaving it abstract, all women
in the town, as it had been in Andreev’s hypotext. A drunken worker remembers how
he was given vodka by the Chief of Police and agreed to incite the rioters later in the
day. This is yet another addition in Protazanov’s hypertext—an explanation for why the
largely peaceful crowd took on a violent character, enflamed by a police conspirator.
In the following brief scene, Meyerkhold’s character presents Tsar Nicholas II with
the Governor’s report. Nicholas II remains off-screen, but is represented by various symbols of the Romanov dynasty as the audience only sees his hand receiving the document
and then writing a note assigning a commendation, The White Eagle, to the Governor.7
The most visually prominent portion of the document is the section that tells of the
death of twelve men, four women, and three children. The collective guilt of this resolute
regime that uses bullets to quell disturbances now extends to the highest level of the imperial government, an assertion that Andreev never even suggested. Protazanov, appealing
to the political sensibilities of the period, portrayed the imperial government as the instigator of the political protest, while also supportive of its violent repression.
The Governor’s wife then calls on the Orthodox Priest, also an addition by Protazanov,
in order to show the complicity of the Church and the State. The Governor suggests
that the Priest hold a special service. The Priest, in turn, chastises the Governor for
having waved his handkerchief, yet he provides the Governor with a blessing. A little
later, the Governor meets with the owners of the factory who have been able to resume
production. In his joy, the Governor twice repeats the phrase: ‘The regime is resolute.’
At the same time, the instigator of the protest (and police informant) is confronted at the
factory and told to leave as everyone knows that he is a traitor. Simultaneously, a party
directorate is passed around among the workers that they are not to engage in any provocative actions. It is only at the midpoint of the film that the Governor reads a letter of
warning from the revolutionaries that he will be punished for his cruel actions. What was
Andreev’s central thesis was minimized by Protazanov in order to lay blame at the feet
of a debased imperial government for both the Governor’s actions and his assassination.
Soon after, the Governor’s superior arrives from St. Petersburg for the ceremony to
present The White Eagle commendation. Representatives from the clergy and industry
Interpreting History 213
also attend. The presentation of the award coincides with the Tsar’s Day holiday. Later
in the day, a sumptuous celebratory meal for governmental and church officials is contrasted with a 5-day hunger strike in the prison. That evening, standing alone in a dark
room with a bust of Nicholas II, the Governor turns to the bust and says: ‘We are finished
your Excellence – you and I. Oh, we are finished!’ At that moment, the police informant
who had instigated the riot is presented to the Governor as an agent of the secret police.
The traitor asks for recognition of his service, especially in light of the Governor’s own
commendation. When the Governor rebuffs the traitor, he begins to leave, but then pulls
out a revolver and shoots several times, destroying the bust of Nicholas II and mortally
wounding the Governor. The Governor dies alone in this dark room as a ball continues
next door with couples dancing, oblivious to what has just happened (Figure 2).
The White Eagle reflected Protazanov’s political reality in which guilt was evenly distributed among the imperial government of Nicholas II, the Governor, the Church, the
merchants, and the drunken (police agent) traitor. Most notably, Protazanov was making
an allusion to the murder of Petr Stolypin, the former Russian Prime Minister, who was
assassinated by the former secret police agent Dmitrii Bogrov in 1911. Many believed
that the murder of Stolypin had been ordered by conservative monarchists, which
seemed to be confirmed when Nicholas II halted the police investigation of Bogrov. The
fact that the former police agent in Protazanov’s film shot the bust of Nicholas II was a
recognizable reference to Bogrov and the culpability of the Tsarist government.
Such allusions to a corrupt imperial government were expedient in 1928 as
Protazanov had to avoid glorifying the former Socialist Revolutionary Party and their
history of political violence—an association that might have been made by cinema
audiences of the time. Significantly, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich had been an
ardent opponent of and was assassinated by the SR combat organization. In 1917, Left
SRs had joined the Bolsheviks in the hopes of sharing power, but had turned against
Figure 2. ‘We are finished your Excellence – you and I. Oh, we are finished!’.
214 FREDERICK H. WHITE
them and agitated for a third Russian revolution the following year. Most SRs were
arrested and exiled. In response, the SRs returned to violence and even attempted to
assassinate Lenin. As a result, Protazanov reoriented the historical reference away from
the SRs’ role in the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich and toward the
suspicious details of the Stolypin assassination.
Employing Ersin Tutan and Raw’s assertion that “history can be used to tell different
stories at different times” (8), we might remember the evolution of the peppered moth.
Due to the pollution of the industrial revolution, the population of dark-coloured
moths increased, while the lighter-coloured moths decreased. Similarly, Protazanov
adapted to his own changing political landscape, adopting historical references that
were more conducive to survival in Stalin’s Soviet Union. More to the point, since its
inception Soviet cinema had been considered a tool for educating the illiterate masses.
As a result, celebratory mass spectacles as organized by Nikolai Evreinov in the 1920s
and historical films such as Sergei Eisenstein’s October (Oktiabr’, 1928) became ‘accurate’ representations of the October revolution for the average Soviet citizen. Similarly,
Protazanov’s adaptation of Andreev’s hypotext was perceived by film audiences as an
accurate interpretation of the past.
In a very short scene that breaks the narrative continuity of Protazanov’s film, a
group of workers, who are enjoying a boat ride, ask their guest to say a few words.
The guest states that the Bolsheviks are not in favour of individual acts of terror. This
political statement, along with the note that is passed among the workers discouraging any further violent political action, underscores that the workers are peaceful and
morally justified in their political protests. Instigation of the riot and the assassination
of the Governor are carried out by the drunken police agent, who is expelled by the
other factory workers once he is found to be a traitor. Such choices by Protazanov were
motivated by recent political events, whereby allusions to Stolypin’s assassination rather
than glorification of SR political violence guaranteed survival.
MAKERANETS’ THE GOVERNOR
Vladimir Makeranets was born in Sverdlovsk in 1947. He graduated from the AllRussian State University of Cinematography (VGIK) in 1975 and worked mainly as a
camera operator for over a decade. The Governor was Makeranets’ first feature film as
a director. The idea for the film adaptation was suggested by the screenwriter Leonid
Porokhnia. Makeranets was intrigued by the offer and after re-reading Andreev’s hypotext, agreed to direct the film. Makeranets had seen Protazanov’s film while at VGIK,
but did not re-watch it before beginning his own version. Makeranets remembers: ‘By
the beginning of the film[making process], little of Protazanov’s film was left in my
memory’.8 Porokhnia recalls that planning for the film began in 1989. ‘It was a time of
change. We all had hope. [We were] all filled with enthusiasm. But no one knew what
would happen next. As you probably know, the dream of the Russian intelligentsia (and
I am one of these) is for happiness and prosperity, [which] does not really pan out. And
at the same time I had the feeling that the air stank of blood’.9
Alun Munslow makes the distinction between the past and history in order to interrogate representations of the-past-as-history. As with White and others, Munslow argues
that the content of the past must be accompanied by a narrative coherence that a
Interpreting History 215
reader or viewer can follow, which demands from the historian or the filmmaker explanations and interpretations of meaning that involve ethical and ideological decisions
(78–79). During perestroika, filmmakers were given more latitude to make these ethical and ideological decisions than at any other time since the 1920s. As a result, these
filmmakers were fascinated with the historical causes of contemporary problems and
Sverdlovsk, unexpectedly, became the focal point of this cinematic investigation of history (Lawton 145–46).
Makeranets’ film begins with the Governor’s arrival in an open carriage at the scene
of the worker’s protest. Similar to Andreev’s hypotext, the Governor states that he cannot respond to the demands of the crowd, but that he is willing to take their demands
to St. Petersburg only if they first return to work. The crowd then surges forward and
pulls the Governor into the crowd. Soldiers retrieve the Governor and he enters a government building as objects are hurled at him. As a result, one of his officers is injured
while the windows and a few objects in the building are destroyed. In Makeranets’
hypertext, the Governor never gives the order from the balcony to fire on the protestors, but is simply lifting a handkerchief to his face as an officer orders the soldiers to
fire twice into the crowd. For Makeranets, the opportunity to re-imagine Andreev’s
hypotext, was not about providing a formulaic representation of pre-Revolutionary
Russia. The intentions of the filmmaker were much more humanistic and reflective of
his own ambiguous political reality. ‘Among political officials, as elsewhere, there have
always been responsible and respectable people. Of course they exist within a system
and cannot always act according to [their] consciences’. For Makeranets, it was important that the decent Governor seems to be carried along by the course of events, full of
uncertainty, pulling out a handkerchief without really waving it, leading directly to the
murder of innocent people. This reflected the zeitgeist of perestroika when the realities
of political change were moving more rapidly than the people in control could manage
that transformation.
As in Andreev’s hypotext, the Governor goes to a barn to see the corpses of those
who were killed during the protest. Thirty-five men, nine women, and three children
(all girls) is the official count. As with Protazanov’s hypertext, Makeranets introduces
a scene with an Orthodox Priest in which there is a testy exchange. Yet, for the most
part, Makeranets’ hypertext follows very closely to Andreev’s original—scenes with the
Governor’s son, a conversation with the peasant-gardener, the Governor reading letters both condemning and supporting his actions, the mother who goes insane out of
grief for her dead child. The true conflict of the film is the internal emotional anguish
that the Governor feels in anticipation of his eventual assassination—Andreev’s stated
intention in originally writing the story.
Makeranets did expand the role of the Chief of Police who appears concerned
about the fate of the Governor. In one scene, the Chief of Police tells an associate
of how he once interrogated a terrorist bomber and asked him what it was that he
wanted. The bomber replied ‘the truth!’ Here, the film raises a point that is never then
resolved—whose version of the truth is morally sound? As in Andreev’s hypotext, the
Governor is eventually assassinated while out on a solitary walk, by a young revolutionary, who fumbles to retrieve the revolver from his coat pocket as his victim awaits the
execution (Figure 3).
216 FREDERICK H. WHITE
Figure 3. The Governor awaits his execution as the revolutionary fumbles.
Made during the last days of the Soviet Union, Makeranets’ film was not as concerned with depicting the Governor’s transgression against humanity and the moral
law that governs society or in suggesting that the resolute regime was corrupt. In fact,
Makeranets remembered that he was not trying to reinterpret Russia’s past, but struggling to make sense of his own political reality. ‘From the start of the film the material
[in Andreev’s story] seemed to me relevant for the time’. As Russia began a difficult
social and political transition ‘that was revolutionary in nature’, the challenge for most
Soviet people was whether to accept the judgments of those in power on difficult political and social issues. It is worth remembering that as a result of Gorbachev’s desire for
a democratic, restructured Party that would guide society, but not have a monopoly
on power, the Communists had split into several factions—old guard and reformists, republic nationalists and Muscovites; while Boris Yeltsin, as head of the Russian
Supreme Soviet, Gavriil Popov, Mayor of Moscow, and Anatolii Sobchak, Mayor of
Leningrad, all had begun to amass political power in opposition to Gorbachev. Such a
fractured political situation approximated Andreev’s political reality more than that of
Protazanov. By 1990, perestroika had failed to deliver significant improvements in the
economy, and the competitive political process had released latent ethnic and national
tensions in the Baltic States and in the constituent republics of Armenia, Georgia,
Ukraine, and Moldova.
Kevin M.F. Platt has argued that as a result of the social upheaval caused by perestroika, Soviet society struggled with its revolutionary past in an attempt to legitimate
and integrate it into a new present. Could Soviet society escape its tradition of catastrophic social revolutions and relinquish the idea of a final all-encompassing transformation? ‘The only successful revolution in Russia must be a renegotiation of the
Russian idea of revolution itself ’ (165). As a result, Gorbachev’s radical social and
political changes were more readily interpreted in a historical context. Platt has argued
that this historical context was increasingly prominent in the Soviet press and within
Interpreting History 217
the political discourse of the perestroika period. ‘[B]y 1989 the dominant voices in
Russian public life spoke not of the process of social modification, “democratization”
(demokratizatsiia), but rather of the goal, the “democracy” (demokratiia), to be created in a
burst of transformation that would utterly dissolve the society of the past in the creation
of the future’ (169).
Consequently, the double coding of The Governor reformulated references to the past
as commentary on the present political situation. Makeranets stated that he was not
inspired by the historical impetus of Andreev’s hypotext (the assassination of Grand
Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich). Instead, he noted that it was the parallels that existed
between Andreev’s hypotext and the actual collapse of the Soviet Union that led
to a ‘rule of banditry’ that informed his cinematic hypertext. During this period of
lawlessness, it was necessary for Governors to surround themselves with bodyguards.
Makeranets found in this situation a resonance with Andreev’s Governor who ‘did not
experience the fear of a wild animal and, due to the strength of his character, would not
show his internal, human fear’. It is for this reason that Makeranets’ The Governor was
much more ambiguous in its approach in which there was no police traitor, no focus
on the negative role of the Church or even a valorisation of the revolutionary struggle of the people. The fact that the people had differing opinions about the Governor
even undermined Andreev’s narrative imperative of an eye for an eye. ‘In the end, the
murder of the Governor is not a coarse execution’, stated Makeranets about his film.
‘There is the same uncertainty in the gunman [as exists in the inhabitants of the town],
even the gun becomes trapped in [the gunman’s] pocket’.
Porokhnia remembered that the film was released in 1991, shortly after the August
Putsch by conservative elements of the government, who had detained Gorbachev with
the hope of reversing his liberal reforms. The putsch collapsed after 2 days of civil
resistance but, effectively, marked the end of the Soviet Union. Porokhnia recalled that
The Governor had been meant as a provocation to the youthful intelligentsia, especially to
those living in the provinces, to challenge their political leaders. In 1993, Porokhnia also
took part in the standoff between Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament that resulted
in street fighting and, eventually, an assault on the White House, Russia’s parliament
building. In retrospect, Porokhnia felt that The Governor had anticipated or reflected
this political turmoil in a meaningful way and had raised the eternal question ‘Who
is guilty?’ for Russia’s unresolved political confusion. In fact, Porokhnia pointed to the
scene in the film when the Police Chief recounts the story of the bomber who was in
search of the truth: ‘In Russia at that time we also wanted the truth. But where was it?
And what was the truth?’
CONCLUSIONS
Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich took every precaution to protect his wife and two foster children, although he was quite fatalistic about his own safety. On 15 February 1905, an
intended assassination was abandoned when the SR terrorist saw Sergei Aleksandrovich’s
children in the carriage as they left the Bolshoi Theatre. The terrorist did not wave a white
handkerchief to signal the assassination—an essential symbol for Andreev’s hypotext and
the two cinematic hypertexts. Two days later, a member of the SR combat organization
threw a bomb into the carriage, killing Sergei Aleksandrovich instantly.
218 FREDERICK H. WHITE
The original title of Andreev’s story was ‘God of Vengeance’ (Bog otmeshcheniia),
but was later changed to ‘The Governor’—possibly due to anticipated problems with
the censor. In either case, Andreev was accurate in forecasting Russia’s path to revolution. Protazanov would revisit the topic a decade after the Bolshevik revolution as Stalin
enacted his own radical social revolution and Makeranets would return to Andreev’s
hypotext during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The focus of this study has been the
evolution of meaning production and how both historiography and film adaptation
are constantly engaged in the interpretive process. As Munslow argues, ‘[i]n writing a
history for the past we create a semiotic representation that encompasses reference to it,
an explanation of it and a meaning for it’ (9). Andreev assembled from historical events
a hypotext about the exertion of political power and the resulting will of the people
based on real events. ‘The Governor’ reflected popular sentiment regarding acts of
political retribution, true to the spirit of 1905. The meaning of these events continued
to evolve and by 1928, this same story offered a very different interpretation—one that
avoided Bolshevik participation in political assassination. The role of the revolutionaries mirrored the official version of history at that time. Finally, the 1991 hypertext
was a provocation for the intelligentsia to interrogate an ongoing historical and cultural concern—‘Who lives well in Russia?’10 A third adaptation of Andreev’s hypotext
would, most certainly, provide its own meaning for events, reflecting completely different values in depicting the Governor’s responsibility to protect the well-being of society,
while also maintaining political stability. This interpretive process has often been part
of a larger discourse around history and national identity; within the Soviet context,
history and identity were continually being redefined and reassembled based on new
political factors. Cinema and literature were often tasked with representing and transmitting that evolving ideology to the Soviet populace. This transformation of events
into seminal moments in history provided, temporarily, meaning for the past, present,
and future. Consequently, this study looks at a singular text, born out of revolutionary
social change, and explores the multiplicity of meanings that occurred with each new
evaluation of the past.
Using Ersin Tutan and Raw’s Darwinian approach, Andreev’s hypotext gradually
evolved and adapted to several new environments, producing multiple interpretations
of historical meaning this hypotext begat Protazanov’s and Makeranets’ hypertexts,
increasing the probability of survival as, more than likely, more offspring (i.e., film adaptations) will be produced in the future. Unfortunately for Russia, the heritable character
of political revolution means that Andreev’s hypertext will offer filmmakers and historians the ability to renegotiate the Russian concept of revolution: a re-evaluation of the
past that will remain relevant and, therefore, be retold for the foreseeable future.
NOTES
For more on Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, see Zeepvat 121–34.
For example, see Konstantin Arabazhin’s review of this story in 1910: ‘From the works of this year, the
novella “The Governor” is clearly influenced by the business of Gapon and resulting [events]’ (9–10).
3
For a discussion of revolutionary social change and how it manifests itself in literary production see Platt.
4
In English, see Frederick H. White 96.
5
For more on Andreev’s visual marketing, see Leving and White 17–38.
6
This was not Protazanov’s first experience with Andreev’s work as he had filmed Anfisa in 1911 (released
1
2
Interpreting History 219
in January 1912), based on the play of the same name. In The White Eagle, Protazanov cast Vasilii Kachalov
and Vsevolod Meyerkhold. Both were quite well acquainted with Andreev’s works and certainly understood the prerevolutionary subtexts. In 1907, Meyerkhold had directed Andreev’s plays To the Stars and
Savva in Terijoki, Finland and Life of Man (Zhizn’ cheloveka) in St. Petersburg for the theatre of Vera
Komissarzhevskaia. Kachalov had successfully played the lead role in Andreev’s Anathema (1909) and the
character Stibelev in Ekaterina Ivanovna (1912), both produced at the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Andreev had also selected Kachalov to play the roles of Samson
in his Samson in Chains (Samson v okovakh) and Henry Tile in his Waltz of the Dogs (Sobachii val’s), but
Nemirovich-Danchenko eventually declined both scripts.
7
The Order of the White Eagle was originally a Polish honour that was resurrected by Nicholas I in 1831.
Within the Russian hierarchy of distinction, the White Eagle was the fourth most important honour.
8
The information for this section about Vladimir Makeranets’ film was provided by the filmmaker in an
e-mail correspondence with the author of this study on 1 August 2013.
9
Leonid Porokhnia provided information about this film in e-mail correspondence with the author of this
study from 28 October 2013 through to 26 January 2014.
10
This question was famously raised in Nikolai Nekrasov’s epic poem of the same name (Komu na Rusi
zhit’ khorosho?). The poem was begun soon after the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861 (first part
published in 1869), but remained unfinished at the time of the author’s death in 1877. Seven peasants
travel across Russia in search of one happy man but find only suffering and injustice.
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