Most likely. There was pretty heavy film censorship and refusals of release during :stalin-pipe:'s years, primarily to promote socialist realism, most notably during the younger years of the USSR and around WW2. But it wasn't an all encompassing system and many Russian directors spoke of being able to navigate it fairly easily, in a similar way directors in the West would hit particular themes hard in their pitch in order to smuggle in more sublte criticisms and themes. Hollywood was also tight within the grip of the Hays Code, goverment interference, and red scare shit of course. The USSR's censorship of film decreased further under :corn-man-khrush: partly due to his liberalisation policies on such things but also due to the material conditions of the time (cold war rather than hot, fewer threats at home etc), while a similar thing was also happening to some degree in the US, particularly during the late 60s and 70s.
My understanding is things chilled out dramatically during... perestroika? I can never remember if glastnost or perestroyka was the social one. Plus, apparently a lot of weird experimental stuff got made because you can do that when you don't have to make a huge profit to justify the script.
Most likely. There was pretty heavy film censorship and refusals of release during :stalin-pipe:'s years, primarily to promote socialist realism, most notably during the younger years of the USSR and around WW2. But it wasn't an all encompassing system and many Russian directors spoke of being able to navigate it fairly easily, in a similar way directors in the West would hit particular themes hard in their pitch in order to smuggle in more sublte criticisms and themes. Hollywood was also tight within the grip of the Hays Code, goverment interference, and red scare shit of course. The USSR's censorship of film decreased further under :corn-man-khrush: partly due to his liberalisation policies on such things but also due to the material conditions of the time (cold war rather than hot, fewer threats at home etc), while a similar thing was also happening to some degree in the US, particularly during the late 60s and 70s.
My understanding is things chilled out dramatically during... perestroika? I can never remember if glastnost or perestroyka was the social one. Plus, apparently a lot of weird experimental stuff got made because you can do that when you don't have to make a huge profit to justify the script.
It was Glasnost. Also yeah a lot of the gorbachev era films were real good from what I’ve heard