Boris Shumyatsky
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Boris Zakharovich Shumyatsky (Russian: Борис Захарович Шумяцкий), the de-facto Executive Producer for the Soviet film monopoly from 1930 to 1937, was born November 4, 1886 somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Baikal in Russian Siberia. He was executed by firing squad as a traitor on July 29, 1938, following a "purge" of the Soviet film industry approved, if not instigated, by Joseph Stalin, and much information about him was expunged from the public record in consequence thereof.
He appears, however, to have been active in Communistic circles by 1903. Following the Russian Revolution he was a party functionary in Soviet Siberia. From 1923 to 1925, he represented Soviet interests in Iran, and after that was in charge of the Communist University of Workers in the East, and then a member of the Central Asian Bureau of the Party Central Committee back in Siberia.
In none of these capacities did he evidently have anything to do with filmmaking. Nonetheless, following a reorganization of the Soviet Film Industry he was selected by Stalin to become the head of Soyuzkino in December, 1930. When Soyuzkino was dissolved and replaced by GUKF on February 11, 1933, he remained in charge and even with expanded powers over all matters of production, import/export, distribution and exhibition.
He is considered by many to have been especially targeted Sergei Eisenstein for mistreatment within the industry. However, as the chief of the Soviet industry, and his job description thus required him to enforce Stalinist thinking therein, it must be noted that he had no real choice but to crack down on filmmakers who were seen as practising formalism, by then considered an ideological evil, and Eisenstein, with his predilection for montage theory and experimental film making - not to mention his five-year absence in the West - with great suspicion within the industry and the government. It must be recalled that it was Shumyatsky who had to ultimately approve Eisenstein to make Bezhin Meadow, the failure of which was a major factor in Shumyatsky's eventual downfall.
Another factor which was turned against Shumyatsky by his opponents was, following a visit to the USA, he returned to Moscow with a vision of moving the hub of the film industry to a spot near Odessa, where the climate and geography was not unlike that of Hollywood and thus more amenable to year-round filmmaking. This vision extended to building an entire film community, to be called Kinograd, a highly expensive proposition.
In the meantime, apart from the "Bezhin Meadow" debacle, Shumyatsky was unable to meet any annual goal for completed films, which also did not escape the notice of his critics and, indeed, may have helped shift their negative attention on to him. For, for its size and resources at the time, the Soviet film industry was far behind even the smaller countries of the capitalist West: in 1935, of a planned 130 feature films, only 45 were completed; in 1936, only 46 of 165 were completed; and in his final year, with only 62 planned, only 24 were delivered.
Stalin had Shumyatsky arrested on 8 January 1938, accused of collaborating with saboteurs within the film industry. He was sent into exile after at most a show trial, and was executed by firing squad a half year later.
[edit] References
Richard Taylor, "Ideology as Mass Entertainment: Boris Shumyatsky and Soviet Cinema in the 1930s", in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, (eds.), Inside the Film Factory, Routledge Ltd., 1991.
