The Holocaust and Russia's Cinematic Go-Betweens: Cultural Diplomatic Internationalism or Covert Information Warfare

Received wisdom posits that, when striving to burnish their international image, democracies engage in soft power or cultural diplomacy, whilst authoritarian states resort to propaganda and information war. This chapter acknowledges the Putin regime’s repressive nature. However, addressing Russia’s global self-projection through cinema, and specifically its recent Oscar nominations, this chapter challenges five linked assumptions underlying the diplomacy/propaganda dichotomy as applied to film: (i) the idea that authoritarian states are capable only of the latter; (ii) the inner coherence of the very terms “cultural diplomacy” and “soft power”; (iii) the fallacy that films intended for international consumption are merely passive instruments of nation projection; (iv) the conception of authoritarian states as homogeneous, hierarchical structures; and, crucially, (v) the distinction between outward projections of stable images of the nation and the mutable, internal performance of national identity. Viewing all five issues through the lens of the last, the chapter explores how they inflect the thematic concerns, narrative structures, aesthetic strategies, and modes, and directly addresses two films nominated for the 2016 and 2018 Oscars respectively: Konchalovsky’s Paradise, and Khabensky’s Sobibor. Both deal with the Holocaust, a blind spot in Soviet/Russian cinematic depictions of the “Great Patriotic War.” This is a theme whose global resonance, yet capacity to incorporate Russian exceptionalism, enables the films to counter external perceptions of Russia’s official national narrative while suffusing it with provocative new meaning.