The golden age of Soviet cinema, in the years following the Russian Revolution, was a time of both achievement and contradiction, as reflected in the films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Kuleshov. Tensions ran high between creative freedom and institutional constraint, radical and reactionary impulses[...]

Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace, one of the world's greatest film epics, originated as a consequence of the Cold War. Conceived as a response to King Vidor's War and Peace, Bondarchuk's surpassed that film in every way, giving the USSR one small victory in the cultural Cold War for hearts and mind[...]