“Of all the arts, cinema is the most important for us.” This phrase, attributed to Lenin, neatly captures the early Bolshevik understanding of film’s political power. From the very beginning, Bolshevik rule understood that film could do something that a political speech, a newspaper article or a slogan could not always achieve: make ideology visible, emotional and collectively experienced. Cinema reached even those who did not read newspapers, lived far from the centre or spoke another language. On screen, the state could tell people who the hero was, who the enemy was, which past deserved respect and which future had to be built.
Soviet film culture developed early around the idea that the moving image could educate, mobilise and shape political imagination. This historical background helps us better understand the starting point of Modern Russian Cinema as a Battleground in Russia’s Information War, edited by Alexander Rojavin and Helen Haft. The book examines how Russian cinema is connected in political culture to power, historical memory and the shaping of social imagination.
The collection explores contemporary Russian cinema at the intersection of information influence, cultural policy and political communication. Its starting point is the idea that films help shape society’s views of history, power, national identity, enemies and moral order.
The book shows how, over recent decades, the Russian film industry has moved increasingly towards state control, dependence on funding and ideological pressure. The authors treat film as part of a wider information space that includes laws, funding models, censorship, distribution conditions, official historical narratives, the media and political institutions. This approach helps explain why propaganda cannot be reduced to individual slogans or political messages.
Influence often works on a deeper level: it shapes recurring images, emotions, character types, plots and value judgments. The book notes, for example, how Russia’s Ministry of Culture justified its refusal to support the screening of Barbie and Oppenheimer by invoking the protection of “traditional spiritual and moral values”, while presenting The Witness as a suitable domestic alternative. That film frames the Bucha massacre in a way that fits Russian state propaganda. The collection also discusses films in which Ukraine is portrayed as a fascist and existentially dangerous space, while war is presented as an inevitable solution. The treatment of law and crime adds another dimension: in films such as Leviathan, A Long Happy Life and The Fool, law often appears as a mechanism of corruption, fear, helplessness or political control.
The book helps us see film as a system that produces meaning. A war film, historical drama or crime film can offer the viewer a fixed understanding of who belongs to “us”, who is assigned guilt, which version of history is considered correct and what kind of violence is shown as inevitable or justified. A critical viewer does not only ask whether a film is based on facts, but also what emotions and political conclusions the film is trying to produce.
The collection moves across several levels, from the economic and institutional structure of the film industry to specific narratives and genre techniques. On the one hand, the book explains how state funding, distribution channels, international isolation and dependence on the domestic market affect which films are made and which audiences they reach. On the other hand, it shows how cinema is used to shape ideas about history, national unity, enemies and political loyalty.
Special attention is given to the memory politics of the Second World War and the Holocaust, the portrayal of Ukraine as a threat, the normalisation of military intervention and private military structures, the politicisation of law and religion, and the reinterpretation of the Soviet dissident legacy.
The strength of the book lies in its analytical precision. The authors do not treat Russian cinema as one uniform mass of propaganda. They show that even in an authoritarian information space, there are tensions, unevenness, contradictions and different aesthetic choices. Some films directly support state narratives, some normalise them more indirectly, and some expose the system’s internal contradictions.
Modern Russian Cinema as a Battleground in Russia’s Information War is well suited for readers interested in Russian information influence, propaganda, film culture, historical memory and critical media literacy. The book reminds us that images, stories and genres often shape our perception of the world before we even consciously notice their influence.
