85 years ago, in November 1934, the film "Chapayev" began showing in cinemas and clubs of the USSR, turning Vasily Chapayev into a myth and himself becoming a legend. In the spring of 1933, Lenfilm directors Sergei and Georgy Vasiliev (namesakes, not brothers) received a script from Anna Furmanova, the wife of the author of the story about Chapayev and his comrades, Dmitry Furmanov. The story interested the Vasilievs, but they were not satisfied with the fact that the main character was a commissar, not a division commander. The directors reworked the text and at the end of 1933 submitted an application to shoot a film "about the leading role of the party in the era of the formation of the Red Army."

Filming began after discussing the content of the film in detail. In the 1930s, cinema was "the most important of the arts" and performed tasks that are now being solved by federal television channels: not only did it distract viewers from everyday life and immerse them in a world of illusory well-being, but it also cultivated confidence in the audience in the correctness of the path chosen by the country and the infallibility of its leadership. Emotional indoctrination in a language accessible to the average person complemented the work of propaganda.

The decision to release films was made in the Kremlin, and Joseph Stalin often had the final say – he could return a film rejected by officials to the screens. But in the case of Chapayev, Stalin was not satisfied with the first version of the script. He wanted to see more lyricism and human relationships in the film – that’s how Anka the Machine Gunner appeared in the script. The plot with a romantic line pleased the leader, and the script was approved.

Boris Babochkin was originally intended to play Petka, not Chapaev. But the actor dreamed of playing the division commander and got so into the role that he was approved for the lead role. Petka was played by Leonid Kmit, the role of Furmanov went to Boris Blinov, an actor from the Leningrad Youth Theater who looked like him. The role of Chapaev's main opponent, Colonel Borozdin, was entrusted to Illarion Pevtsov, who had an intelligent appearance. Young Georgy Zhzhenov took part in the filming, and Georgy Vasiliev made his mark in the episode of the psychological attack, marching in the first rank.

When Chapaev won

Opinions / From the editors

The deadlines were tight, and the film's budget was small. Most of the film was shot near Kalinin, the battle scenes were shot at the 48th Division's training ground, using soldiers and cadets from the local garrison as extras. The legendary scene of Chapaev's death was reshot in cool weather. Babochkin repeatedly dove into the river, was forced to warm himself with vodka, and developed a stomach ulcer, which he suffered from for the rest of his life.

Fearing demands to change the "dark" episodes, the Vasilievs filmed alternate versions of the finale. In addition to the classic one known to everyone, they proposed a victorious march of Chapayev's men through Lbischensk and a plot where Petka commands a division, and Anka babysits children under Chapayev's voiceover: "Do you know what life will be like? You don't have to die!" But in the end they decided that death was a bright point that did not tolerate afterwords.

The success of the film was not immediately obvious: after the first screening of Chapayev by the leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in the summer of 1934, the party curator of cinema, Boris Shumyatsky, left the hall without shaking the directors' hands. He feared that the film and he would be accused of praising the enemy and that organizational conclusions would be adopted. According to legend, the fate of Chapayev was decided by the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Kliment Voroshilov, and Semyon Budyonny, who responded to the scene of the psychological attack with the words: "They walk beautifully, the devils!" The decisive event was the screening at the Central Committee on November 4, 1934. "I was desperately worried about the assessment of the film as a whole... When the film was ending, I. V. [Stalin] said: "You can congratulate yourself on your success. It was done well, cleverly and tactfully. "Chapaev, Furmanov and Petka are good... I.V. and others praised the work as brilliant, truthful and talented..." Shumyatsky wrote later. True, after the film was released on screens, in December 1934, Stalin and Voroshilov asked to change Chapaev's remark about the ability to command on a "global scale" and limit his claims to the front.

A number of episodes from the film have become classics of cinema: for example, the psychological attack of the Whites and the counterattack of the Chapayevites, led by the division commander on a dashing horse, the death of Chapayev in the Urals, the scene where he explains to Furmanov the place of the commander at different moments of the battle with the help of potatoes and a cast-iron pot, etc. It is interesting that those going into the psychological attack were called Kappelites, although in real battle the Chapayevites and the units of General Vladimir Kappel did not meet. The most combat-ready in the White Army in the East in 1919 were the Izhevsk and Votkinsk regiments formed from workers. The authorities could not allow the general public to find out about this. Therefore, the most dangerous enemies of the Soviet power on the battlefield are shown to be officers of the fictional elite regiment. And the myth of the psychological attack then migrated to the official history of the Civil War.

The screening of Chapayev on November 7, 1934 also drew critical responses. On November 10, critic Khrisanf Khersonsky wrote: "The film portrays Furmanov, a representative of the party that raised the Chapayevs, very uncertainly and superficially." That same day, at a screening in the Kremlin, Stalin said that such critics were "disorienting" and, in the presence of Shumyatsky, spoke with Pravda editor-in-chief Lev Mekhlis, who promised to publish an article with the "correct orientation." On November 21, Pravda wrote: "The whole country will see Chapayev." Stalin, the USSR's leading filmgoer and film critic, had seen it 38 times by March 1936: he re-watched it more than twice a month. The Vasilievs were the first filmmakers to be awarded the Order of Lenin.

Chapayev's march across the Soviet cinema screens was triumphant. By the end of the 1930s, the film had been seen by about 60 million people. Newsreels captured columns of viewers under banners reading "We are going to see Chapayev." The Saturn cinema in Leningrad showed it every day for two years. The love for the film was generated by the simple-minded heroes, who aroused the sincere sympathy of millions of viewers. As Sergei Vasiliev noted, "if the viewer does not imitate our hero, the film loses its value."

"Chapayev" is one of the unique episodes in the history of cinema, when a state order coincided with a mass demand for a national hero. Soviet leaders sought to consolidate in the people a picture of the Civil War that was favorable to them, to show the victory in it as the result of the creativity of individual heroes from the lower classes, patronized by the party, and to obscure the role of thousands of tsarist officers in the successes.

The film continued the transformation of Chapaev into a national myth, begun by Furmanov's story. During the Great Terror, Vasily Blucher, Epifan Kovtyukh, Aleksandr Pavlov and Chapaev's successor in the 25th Division and the film's consultant Ivan Kutyakov, whose military merits and courage were not inferior to Chapaev's, became "enemies of the people" and disappeared from history.

Chapaev remained in the public consciousness as one of the main heroes of the Civil War. In later years, the attention of the authors of historical films naturally shifted to the events of the Great Patriotic War, which were closer and more dramatic for most citizens of the USSR, and the legendary hero of the Civil War turned into an anecdotal Vasily Ivanych. But the myth and the anecdote bear little resemblance to the real Chapaev, with his personal drama and complicated relationships with his superior commanders.

In recent years, many films have been made about different periods of the past. Their heroes were ancient Russian princes, tsarist officers and officials, Panfilov's men and security officers, but none of them aroused the interest and delight of viewers comparable to "Chapaev". Often the heroes of modern historical films are just functions, there is little human in them, and the plots, supposedly "based on real events", have little in common with historical reality. Although there are more than enough bright personalities in our relatively recent history, whose lives are more interesting than any fiction: for example, the colonel of the White and general of the Yugoslav army Fyodor Makhin, one of the leaders of Russian intelligence and probable agent of the OGPU General Nikolai Monkevits or one of the founders of the Soviet special forces Ilya Starinov, but they are still waiting for their directors Vasilievs.

The author is a historian

"Chapaev" and the myth of Chapaev