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Literature under Brezhnev did not entirely suffocate from censorship, because it had other outlets besides official, state-approved publishing resources. Writers and poets had an opportunity to publish their unorthodox works either through samizdat, represented in the underground literary journal Metropol' and other unofficial publications, or tamizdat (publication and distribution of literary works abroad). Unlike their literary counterparts, however, filmmakers had to depend on the state system’s financial support and resources.

To better contextualize the dynamics of Aesopian language in Brezhnez-era youth films, we must first consider how these techniques were deployed in other films from that era. In this section, my goal is not to describe extensively all the devices that are used in Aesopian texts, but rather to give examples of the most common ones. The most thorough study of Aesopian techniques in literature was offered by Lev Loseff. As previously mentioned, Loseff developed his typology by distinguishing two groups of literary devices based on their function and purpose: markers and screens. One of his most intriguing claims is that often both markers and screens can be found in the same textual element and have the purpose of both attracting the reader’s attention to a specific part of the text and concealing its meaning at the same time. Only those literary devices that have some veiled “denotation-taboos,” which cannot be used openly and indiscreetly, are Aesopian. There is always some level of secrecy, understatement, or ambivalence in order for Aesopian devices to work properly as screens and markers.

An attentive reader or viewer does not necessarily need to search for specific devices but rather must be alert when he meets them in the text. For this reason, authors have to use devices that are familiar to an educated audience, that point at some break into the continuity of the

because of its unusual, “mystic” character. David K. Danow writes about the following devices that are typical of Aesopian strategy: “the utilization of imagery borrowed from fables, allegorical fairy tale description, the use of periphrasis and pseudonyms, hidden allusions at times coupled with fairly direct references […], irony, and various juxtapositions and contrasts”

(9). Cinema may employ hidden allusions, references, juxtapositions, contrasts, and irony in ways that may differ from their use in which literature relies on these devices. Filmmakers may juxtapose and contrast characters visually by using low or high angles, close-ups or point-of-view angles to emphasize or devalue the importance of one character in comparison to another.

They may also create sympathy among viewers with a particular cinematic character by allowing camera to identify with this character. Directors may also juxtapose the past and the present through a serious of flashbacks. With the help of lighting and setting, filmmakers may present objects, subjects, or events, which are compared, either in a positive or negative way. To the list of Aesopian devices in literature, Ray J. Parrott Jr. also adds euphemisms and aposiopesis, or

“the suggestive incomplete sentence,” to the list of devices that contribute to the creation of allegorical indirection and polysemy, or “semantic bi-planarity” (39, 42). Parrott generates another set of Aesopian techniques by analyzing nineteenth-century-works by Saltykov-Shchedrin: “typological names, conspiratorial nicknames, coded appellations, epithets, synonyms, metaphors and images” (44). In his discussion of Russian literature of the nineteenth century, Parrott argues:

The devices employed in an Aesopian manner were extremely varied, depending on the content of a work, the satirist’s stated aim and audience, the social and political circumstances in which a piece was written, and the general development of a writer’s artistic craft. Yet, given the central impulse toward mystification,

writers tended to employ a number of stock situations, comparisons, and contrasts as well as techniques. (43)

If the first five devices that Parrott offers are mostly unique for literary texts, images and metaphors may be found easily in films. Ludmilla L. Litus distinguishes her own set of devices that are common to the literary works of this twentieth-century-writer: “sound play, word play (neologisms, archaisms, vulgarisms), rhythmic devices, repetitions, and extended figures and tropes” (115). Some of these devices may function productively in the film narrative (sound play and word play), but also may become purely cinematic. For examples, filmmakers may emphasize the importance of specific characters, objects, or events on the screen by showing them multiple times either through flashbacks or just bringing them back through cuts. In addition to integrating rhythmic devices in poems, which may be used in a diegetic or non-diegetic layer of the film, rhythmic montage may contribute to the creation of Aesopian meaning.

Among the rhetorical figures, poetic devices, and tropes common to literary works, Loseff recognizes seven main categories that can be found most often in Aesopian texts: allegory, parody, periphrasis, ellipsis, citation, shift, and reduction ad absurdum and non sequitur (61).

Most of the devices listed by Loseff can be also found in visual Aesopian texts. Because film includes narrative and dialogues, these literary devices may operate in cinema in their original forms; however, because film is a visual medium, these techniques may also obtain slightly different functions.

Many of the literary devices described by Loseff work well in any cultural text, but may function differently in each text depending on the medium of translation: literature, film, music, or painting. Aesopian devices also work differently in cinematic texts because of their reliance not only on the narrative, but also on the aural and visual elements. One of the most important

devices that serve Aesopian language in literature, cinema, and music on a regular basis is allegory. Allegory is the base of all Aesopian language, upon which other devices like allusions, juxtapositions, irony, shifts, and other devices interact and function. Allegory does not necessarily have to be Aesopian, especially when censorship does not have a strong cultural presence. Even official Soviet culture often turned to allegories, and Loseff argues that this is especially evident in Soviet propaganda literature and poetry by Arkadii Gaidar, Nikolai Tikhonov, Nikolai Ushakov, and Vadim Shefner (105). The practitioners of Aesopian allegory in post-Stalinist culture included Evgenii Shvarts, Evgenii Evtushenko, Fazil' Iskander, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In a similar vein, Soviet filmmakers also resorted to Aesopian allegorical strategies in their film production. One of the most important differences between literary and cinematic allegory is that, if the former employs “speech clichés and metaphor”

(Loseff 91), the latter has a richer arsenal of techniques: literary, visual, and aural. In cinema, the tracks of allegorical structures can be found not only in dialogues and monologues of characters, but also in the specifically organized settings, mise-en-scène, camera angle, camera movement, shot composition, costumes, sounds and music, lighting, and montage.

Aesopian allegory always implies a limited audience and can be constructed by “drawing [author’s] screens and markers either from an area with which only fairly learned readers will be familiar… or from the idiom of the intelligentsia, with which the censor is believed to be unacquainted,” according to Loseff (87). Thus, in the Soviet cinema of “developed socialism,”

many films relied on allegorical principles that were evident to only a specific group of viewers, mainly to intellectuals who did not entirely trust the government anymore. The intelligentsia belonged to the select group insofar as it was more knowledgeable about the political and

economic situation in the country and was able to analyze problems more keenly than the average Soviet filmgoer.

It is not surprising that those films of the 1970s through the early 1980s that place allegorical reading at the center of the work would also feature Soviet intellectuals as key figures in the narrative. Popular films under Brezhnev offer their audiences a wide range of awkward and unfortunate situations in which members of the Soviet intelligentsia find themselves and which they then try to resolve. In El'dar Riazanov’s A Rail Station for Two (Vokzal dlia dvoikh, 1982), for example, the main protagonist, musician Platon Sergeevich Riabinin, is sent to prison for a crime he did not commit; he does so in order to protect his wife. Because of an unfortunate accident, as a result of which a person has been killed, Platon Sergeevich’s status changes from a well-to-do music conductor with a beautiful wife and a personal car to a prisoner-custodian somewhere in the outskirts of the country. The motif of the Soviet intelligentsia exiled to the middle of nowhere penetrates the entire film structure, and A Rail Station for Two is framed with episodes from the prison both in the opening and closing scenes; additionally, the continuous flow of the narrative is intermittently interrupted by visuals of Riabinin’s camp life (See Figure 1). The prison setting in which Riabinin serves his sentence is visually reminiscent of the images of numerous labor camps during Stalinist years. This creates an allegorical parallel between a cinematic character in Riazanov’s film and the real Soviet intellectuals who were unjustly sentenced to prison. In the closing scene, Platon Sergeevich is sitting together with his beloved waitress Vera on the road among piles of snow and playing an accordion to signal his late return from his day off to the prison guards. Cacophonic sounds gradually take over the aural space of the final scene, while the camera zooms out from the sitting figures of Vera and Platon Sergeevich with a sunrise in the background (See Figure 2). Despite an optimistic

mise-en-scène, the final eerie music contrasts greatly to the on-screen imagery, allegorically alluding to the fact that intellectuals like Platon Sergeevich are doomed to be sent to the outskirts of the Soviet Motherland so they cannot “harm” the rest of the society with their unconventional ideas.

Figure 1: A Rail Station for Two

Figure 2: A Rail Station for Two

Georgii Daneliia’s Autumn Marathon (Osennii marafon, 1979) is another allegorical reflection on the impotence of the Soviet intelligentsia during the Brezhnev period. The protagonist, Buzykin, who works as a translator for an editing house, leads a boring life, does extra work for his colleague Varvara without being acknowledged for it, and at the same time has an extramarital affair with a younger woman, Alla. Dmitry and Vladimir Shlapentokh argue that in Soviet cinema under Brezhnev, “promiscuity or cheating is portrayed as a symbol of the cynicism of Soviet intellectuals and of society in general” (161). Buzykin’s dissatisfaction with life echoes the disappointment with the system that some Soviet intellectuals were experiencing under Brezhnev. In one of the scenes, this allegory of a recalcitrant, inflexible Soviet society is emphasized by showing a film poster with a sad male face and the title of the film, Destiny (“sud'ba”) (See Figure 3). Small details of the setting also contribute to the idea of the intellectuals’ failure to operate effectively in a changing society. On the wall of Buzykin’s apartment, there is a stylized painting of a man in a tie with a clown face, who represents an intellectual. Most of the time, this painting appears on the screen with Buzykin in the same shot.

(See Figures 4-5). Therefore, Daneliia uses an ironic comparison that needs to be deciphered by viewers. This allegory the intelligentsia’s impotence and incapacity is complemented and reinforced at the aural level by mournful, pessimistic music, which frames the narrative and functions as an allegorical accompaniment to Buzykin’s pitiful, dishonest, passive life, an existence from which he cannot escape. The setting, the framing, and the soundtrack in A Rail Station for Two and Autumn Marathon are among important elements that contribute to the allegorical structure of the film.

Figure 3: Autumn Marathon

Figure 4: Autumn Marathon

Figure 5: Autumn Marathon

Another common Aesopian technique that many films during the Brezhnev period share is intertextuality. In this instance, the film director typically includes excerpts from poems that were not widely known but were easily recognizable by the educated audience within the context of the specific time period. The citations helped the filmmakers to convey ideas that they would be wise not to openly express. An educated audience of Aesopian texts would not simply interpret a poetic excerpt in the context of the current historical and cultural situation, but would also read it holistically, by bringing in the poet’s background and his role in culture and keeping in mind the rest of the poem that was not included in the film.

Citation points directly at another text and only becomes an Aesopian marker if, within the context of the new text, it creates a new meaning that can be deciphered by an educated audience but overlooked by censors. The omitted part of the citation or its original context can also be a part of the strategy. In this regard, citation is a device that is not substantially different from ellipsis because it may also mark a gap, or a lack, in the cited text, which ignites the search for hidden meaning. As a screen, ellipsis hides important meaning and at the same time, as a marker, it attracts the readers’ or the viewers’ attention by manipulating their desire to solve the puzzle. Because most of the time citation involves truncating the original text and recycling only a small part of it, it may also ignite the audience’s curiosity to find out the origin of the specific citation and its context.

Kevin Moss gives an example of Aesopian citation in Grigorii Gorin’s The Very Same Munchausen (Tot samyi Munkhauzen). The events in Gorin’s film take place in Germany, and thus the screen is created to conceal any reference to Soviet society. At the same time, according to Moss, the citation from Nikolai Gogol’s Inspector General (Revizor) in Gorin’s film—“So,

gentlemen, I have invited you in order to inform you of a most unpleasant bit of news”—works as a way to attract the viewers’ attention to the surreptitious Russian context (24-5). It functions as marker, and by placing a quote from classical Russian literature in a foreign context, Gorin hints at the subtle connection between the events on the screen and the situation in Russian/Soviet society.

Citing from a literary source is widely popular in Aesopian literature; however, Soviet film directors during the Brezhnev years also used poems by famous Russian poets for song lyrics in their films. Song lyrics as part of a film soundtrack work even better as an Aesopian technique because they do not only draw the viewers’ attention as markers, but are veiled by music that the viewers often perceive only as a background for the actions on the screen. In El'dar Riazanov’s The Irony of Fate or “Enjoy Your Bath” (Ironiia sud'by ili S legkim parom!, 1975), many song lyrics heard in the film are based on poems by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Bella Akhmadulina, and Evgenii Evtushenko. Even though most of the lyrics in The Irony of Fate are dedicated to the themes of love, loneliness, and friendship, an educated spectator would immediately recognize the ambivalent political and cultural status of the poets whose words are incorporated into the soundtrack.¹⁷ The biographical backgrounds of these

17 Pasternak and his works were still condemned by the Soviet state until the end of the 1980s.

Similarly, Tsvetaeva was not favored by the state and she struggled to revive her literary career until her death in 1941. In some of her poems, she also skillfully uses Aesopian language to comment on the Soviet regime. Akhamadulina, even though never openly opposed the Soviet government and considered to be “apolitical,” is well-known for her active role as a defender of dissident intellectuals, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, and Pasternak.

Evtushenko is an ambiguous literary figure in the history of Russian poetry: on the one hand, he was accused of collaborating with the regime by his fellow poets; on the other hand, his poem Babii Iar (1961) was criticized for invoking the Holocaust when the official Soviet heroic narratives of the World War II avoided discussing the extermination of European Jews by the state during the war. His The Heirs of Stalin (Nasledniki Stalina, 1961) was republished only under Mikhail Gorbachev.

poets cannot be ignored while analyzing their poems, and the use of their poems in melodramas during the Brezhnev years may be interpreted as an attempt on the part of filmmakers to construct a second meaning. Some of the songs in Riazanov’s film include lines that refer to the absence and loss of friends, betrayal by friends and lovers, as well as the trope of roads, travel, and foreign countries. These lines can be read on two levels: as straightforward messages and as indirect Aesopian references to the political and ideological situation in the country, when the state demanded writers and artists to denounce their friends and colleagues who positioned themselves with the dissident movement and when many intellectuals were prosecuted by the government and exiled from the center of the country or from the Soviet Union altogether.

The omission that emerges in the citation of a specific literary excerpt is partially connected to Loseff’s category of Aesopian ellipsis, insofar as some important piece of information is missing. If an ellipsis in general is a break in narrative continuity, it serves in Aesopian literary and visual texts as a means to conceal certain meanings. In cinema, ellipses may be constructed through editing transitions, such as jump cuts, fades, dissolves, wipes, or unmotivated changes of scene. The intention of Aesopian ellipsis is to encourage viewers to fill the gap with some meaning that is not directly expressed by the director. In the Soviet cinema of

“developed socialism,” the ellipsis was often a part of the narrative that in one way or another alluded to “tabooed” topics (markers) and at the same time distracted viewers’ attention from some sensitive topics (screens). Thus, in Men'shov’s Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (Moskva slezam ne verit, 1979), the ellipsis after the first half of the film allows the director to omit the part in which the young protagonist, Katia, has to deal with her unplanned pregnancy alone. Through this technique, Men'shov conceals Katia’s struggle through single parenthood and emphasizes her final accomplishments and her growth from a regular plant worker into a

plant director. Consequently, Men'shov puts forward the idea that Soviet people will always triumph as long as they have a goal and work hard to achieve it.

If citation requires an exact repetition of the original text or transferring a part of it into another text, allusion indirectly or covertly refers readers or viewers to a specific text, event, or character. Thus, Moss finds several allusions to Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita in Zakharov’s film The Very Same Munchausen. For example, the Baron’s burnt manuscripts allude to the Master’s burned novel and both Thomas in Gorin’s film and Korov'ev in

If citation requires an exact repetition of the original text or transferring a part of it into another text, allusion indirectly or covertly refers readers or viewers to a specific text, event, or character. Thus, Moss finds several allusions to Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita in Zakharov’s film The Very Same Munchausen. For example, the Baron’s burnt manuscripts allude to the Master’s burned novel and both Thomas in Gorin’s film and Korov'ev in