The Red Atlantis: Communist Culture in the Absence of Communism

Culture and the Moving Image

by J. Hoberman

Argues that Communism produced a complex culture with a dialectical relation to both modernism and itself. Offering examples ranging from the Stalinist show trial to Franz Kafka's posthumous career as a dissident writer, this book says that Communism was an aesthetic project.

Genres: Film

315 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Author bio from Verso Press:

J. Hoberman served as the senior film critic at The Village Voice from 1988-2012. He has taught at Harvard, NYU, and Cooper Union, and is the author of ten books, including Bridge of Light, The Red Atlantis, and The Dream Life.

Reviews

[Maksim Karpitski · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, if uneven collection of essays. The major drawback here is that the communist culture as discussed within the book is mostly not the culture of the Soviet Union. We get a thorough discussion of the Berlin Wall, Soviet Jewish cinema (though I feel this is given better justice in Bridge of Light), Polish and Czecoslovak cinema, Victor Serge etc. - that is remarkable things that existed on the margins of the Soviet culture per se. This is not to say they do not provide some valuable insights in the nature of the Red Atlantis and modernist project on the whole but the nagging insatisfaction is still there. Another qualm I had with the book is how ready J. Hoberman is to condemn the Soviet atrocities. I won't hesitate to speak out against Stalinism myself but calling the Hungarian revolution (disregading altogether its not insignificant rightist streak) doomed but glorious was hard to stomach. I guess I could live with that since the point was that the USSR has been wrong impose its will on another country anyway but a case of glaring incompetence in the essay on Soviet Jewish cinema is another matter. There J. Hoberman goes on to state that Comissar was the lone Soviet film to acknowledge Jewish suffering during World War II while overlooking The Eastern Passage (Vostochny koridor, 1966) by the great Valentin Vinogradov. Very strange for a well-known cinephile and a historian of cinema with a particular interest in all things Jewish and Soviet. Isn't he making more mistakes then, jumping to conclusions and making grand generalizations too easily? Well, even if this is the case, I enjoyed reading this and often found it quite stimulating.

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays about Socialist Realism now that Soviet Communism is a thing of the past.

Some of the essays are better than others; and I would have liked more of structure. There is (to me) an over-emphasis on the Hungarian and Czechoslovak cases. The Soviet case seems to vanish after the mid-point of the book, and East Germany and Poland seem nearly deliberately excluded.

To me, the heart of the book a series of film reviews that cover the subject of Communism and the Cold War in movies from 1924 to 1991. There are Soviet classics, such as "Aelita" and "The Radiant Road," and forgotten topical Hollywood films like "Mission to Moscow" and "The Red Menace." It is a great selection of films and fits together pretty well, and then falls apart after "Red Dawn."

Then the book ends with a piece on the Rosenbergs, which actually weaves together an article about the furor about "The Rosenberg File" and a short story Hoberman wrote about the Rosenbergs. This didn't work for me.

Still, Hoberman has plenty of good insights here. If you have an interest in the culture of the Communist era in Europe, this is definitely worth a look.