The Film Ivan by Oleksandr Dovzhenko in the Light of the Soviet Intelligence Services

A set of archival documents of the Soviet secret services (agent messages, reports, summaries, etc.) related to Dovzhenko’s work on the film Ivan in 1931–1932 is analyzed in the article. Ivan is just the film that has the largest number of documents of this kind among the works. The agents have informed the secret services about the work on the script, its passage through the censorship authorities, and the filming period in their reports. The criticism of the author has started in Ukraine after the completion of the film. During this period the agents have recorded the artist’s difficult moral and psychological state, his negative statements against the Ukrainian party leadership and representatives of the literary and artistic intelligentsia, and the measures taken by the leaders of the Ukrainian and Soviet cinematographers to level the negative assessment of the film in the press. Relevant experts have been engaged to write reviews to obtain more complete information about the film. The director has been forced to move to Moscow because of the considerable pressure and negative attitude in Ukraine. He is introduced to Joseph Stalin there. The dictator has liked the movie. Following Stalin, official criticism also has changed its mind about Ivan, and the film was allowed to be shown. Dovzhenko was saved from seemingly certain death. The director has soon started work on his next film, called Aerograd. But the Soviet secret services did not let the artist out of their sight in Moscow. In general, the surveillance of O. Dovzhenko during his work on the film Ivan was part of a much wider range of operational activities of the special services to obtain compromising materials about the artist’s “anti-Soviet” activities and continued until his death.