The USSR and East-Central European Countries at the Venice International Film Festival (1946-1953)

This essay offers an historical reconstruction of the presence of the USSR and its East-Central European satellites at the Venice International Film Festival between 1946 and 1953. Venice provided an exemplary space for transnational negotiation in the bipolar Europe of the immediate postwar years. Te Soviet Union perceiving this festival as a stage for political and ideological competition rather than one based on artistic and cultural merit. Te dynamics of this relationship largely reflected East-West relations of the early Cold War albeit with some notable discrepancies, such as when the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Germany under Soviet occupation attended the festival in 1947. Te 1953 return of the USSR and its satellites transformed Venice into an international space in which the first tentative steps toward peaceful coexistence could be observed. The USSR and east-central European countries at the Venice international film festival, 1946-1953. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298631069_The_USSR_and_east-central_European_countries_at_the_Venice_international_film_festival_1946-1953 [accessed Dec 10 2017].