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Chapaev (dir. Vasiliev Brothers, 1934)

Considered the quintessential Socialist Realist film, Chapaev is based on a 1924 novel by Bolshevik Party activist Dmitri Furmanov (1891-1926). Furmanov grounded his novel in his true-life experience working at the side of Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev, Red Army commander who gained fame during the Civil War (1918-21) for his heroic exploits. When Furmanov's novel was published, the general public still knew Chapaev's name well and the novel raised his accomplishments to mythic proportions. Furmanov's widow pushed for a film version of the story and saw to it that her husband's name was given to the party commissar represented in the film (in the novel, Furmanov had given his character a pseudonym). By naming the commissar "Furmanov," the film Chapaev implies that it is an accurate representation of real historical events, something that the novel never claimed. The film was huge hit, not least because the Civil War was such a formative experience for Soviet society and the party.

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