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Every year, day, hour, minute, second, something is changing. The second hand changes positions, a step is taken, someone exhales and somewhere else, inhales. On a minuscule level,  change often goes unnoticed. A door opening, a lock of hair hitting the floor, a mouse scampering from one place to another; these changes do not effect the world. On a grand scale however, change can transform the world. Social, cultural, economic, art and political changes are the moving forward of humanity, the transitions in history and the transformations of cities, countries and people. When documented, whether it be through writing, film, photos or sound, these important changes and experiences can be cemented in history. Dziga Vertov's, "Man With A Movie Camera (1929), both documents and relies on change, through its message, editing and depiction of a complete twenty-four hour day. Filmed over three years and three cities (Moscow, Kiev and Odessa),  the film gives a look into the everyday lives of the people living in then Soviet Russia.

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The editing in Man With A Movie Camera, also serves a purpose in bringing Moscow, Kiev and Odessa together as one on screen to create a Soviet super city of sorts, tricking the viewer into the idea of it being one, twenty hour long day, though the actual filming took years. This concept of piecing together the film brought the full experience of a modern city from sunrise to sunset. There are constant shots of modernism through the people and machinery; cars, gears, trains, typewriters, cameras and construction are abundant, highlighting the transformation of the Soviet world through rapid industrial and technological advancements.

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Vertov, Dziga, director. Man With A Movie Camera. All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration, 1929

Matthew “Man With A Movie Camera (1929)” Classic Art Films, 6 Aug. 2015,

http://www.classicartfilms.com/man-with-a-movie-camera-1929.

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Dziga Vertov shooting a film. A still from the documentary "The Gameless World."

RIA Novosti

One of the works that documentary film pioneer Dziga Vertov shot in the beginning of the 20th century is today considered by some to be among the best films of all time, while his other films still have a big impact on modern cinema. Jan. 2, 2016 is the 120th anniversary of the birth of this respected Russian film director.

Dziga Vertov was the first to consider film not as a theatrical performance or a historical document but as an independent artifact. "I am the cinema eye. I am a mechanical eye. I am a machine showing you the world in the way only I can see it," he would declare in his early manifestos.

For Vertov the effectiveness of film's impression on the viewer is not related to the actors acting out an entertaining story in front of the camera, or to the camera being placed in some specific place, for example a meeting where Lenin was to speak. Its primary effect is caused by the interchanging of full shots, medium shots and close-ups, by the rhythm with which the shots alternate and how fast and slow motion are used.

Even official events whose filming he directed (between 1922 and 1925 he managed the department of newsreels at the All-Union Film Association, then State Cinema, which produced films in the USSR and engaged in censorship) were filmed from unexpected points and angles with a hidden camera: from a moving car, a factory pipe, the wheels of a train.

The plots of Vertov's earlier films have secondary meaning. His most famous and radical films, Cinema Eye (1924) and Man with a Movie Camera (1929), are large-scale film frescoes whose plots can be summed up with short phrases: "Life in a big city" and "The old and the new," while their artistry is generated by the parallelism of shots and the impetuous rhythm of the editing.

However, the first film received a medal and a diploma from the World Exhibition in Paris (1924) and the second was elected as one of the 10 best films of all time and the best documentary film by British film critics in 2012.

Montage from the past

Of course, the development of the cinematographic language in the 1910-20s was developing in various countries, in both narrative and documentary films, and later in sound films. But Vertov indeed anticipated many of the works made by David Griffith, Fritz Lang and Leni Riefenstahl, whose Olympia (1938) is considered a model for documentary film.

However, like any avant-garde artist, though himself unaware of it, Vertov was very close to long-established traditions. The late articles of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy contain a categorical refusal of the conventions of traditional theater (Shakespeare's plays and classical opera), but also the idea that anticipated the concept of film editing: that art is born not with the description of vivid characters and their vicissitudes, but only with their "connection," that is, editing.

A restless name

Vertov's real name was David Kaufman, which unambiguously points to his Jewish origin. But the desire of the talented youth from Bialystok (at the time part of the Russian Empire, today Poland) to change his surname upon arrival in Moscow was unlikely to have been due to anti-Semitism - in the 1920s it was not as developed as in the 1950s. Vertov, like many avant-garde artists, probably just chose a new name to herald "a new life."

In Ukrainian dziga means whirligig, spinning top, while vertov comes from the verb vertet (to spin). The two form something like "the spinning whirligig," a name that was entirely fitting for the man who bore it.

Dziga's brother Boris Kaufman, who was 10 years younger, emigrated from Russia after the revolution, graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris, moved to America and became a famous director of photography, working with Sydney Lumet and Elia Kazan. In fact, Kazan's On the Waterfront brought Boris an Oscar in 1953.

Resurrected in Dogma

Fortunately, Vertov was spared the tragic fate of many avant-garde artists. He was not shot and was not sent to the camps. But after the Soviet government's brief affair with the avant-garde, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin began to favor "the imperial style" and Vertov's innovative work was no longer seen as useful.

During WWII Vertov shot three promotional films but all his other proposals were refused. From 1944 to his death in 1954 he worked as editor at the cinema magazine Novosti Dnya ("News of the Day").

Man with a Movie Camera poster. Source: DPA/Vostock-Photo

Interest in Vertov was resuscitated towards the end of the 20th century when directors who signed the Dogma-95 (a conceptual manifesto of independent cinema in the 1990s whose chief ideologue was Lars von Trier) basically returned to the principles that Vertov had once declared: shooting in natural conditions, hand-held photography, and the use of a hidden camera and real characters.

In 1995 Michael Nyman created his original soundtrack to Man with a Movie Camera - defining proof, if any more were required, that avant-garde director Vertov had truly become a classic.

All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

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Dziga Vertov: How a Soviet avant-garde filmmaker became a world classic

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One of the works that documentary film pioneer Dziga Vertov shot in the beginning of the 20th century is today considered by some to be among the best films of all time, while his other films still have a big impact on modern cinema. Jan.

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World War I — Russia

Russia entered the first world war with the largest army in the world, standing at 1,400,000 soldiers; when fully mobilized the Russian army expanded to over 5,000,000 soldiers (though at the outset of war Russia could not arm all its soldiers, having a supply of 4.6 million rifles).

Europe: 1914

The Russian Ministry of War was commanded by General Sukhomlinov. Though Tsar Nicholas wished to lead the Russian Army into battle personally, he was persuaded otherwise and instead named his uncle, the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Commander in Chief.

Russian Artillery in formation

The first offensive Russia launched was in August 1914, against Germany in East Prussia. The Russian First Army (commanded by Rennenkampf) aimed straight into the heart of East Prussia (held by the German Eight Army), while the Russian Second Army (commanded by Samsonov) aimed to cut off the Eighth army's line of retreat. Once Eastern Prussia was secure, the Russian Ministry of War planned to march on Berlin.

The Battle of Tannenberg: The First and Second Russian Army rapidly compromised the German positions in East Prussia, moving with such zeal that they outran their logistical support. After weeks of loses, the remaining German Eighth Army (led by Ludendorf), left their defensive positions and marched between the advanced positions of both Russian armies. The German Army turned West and attacked the flank of the Russian Second Army. Within four days of fighting, bogged down in lakes and swamps, the Russian Second Army was defeated. Samsonov shot himself. A week later, General Hindenburg led the Eighth German Army, bolstered by reinforcements, to drive the Russian First Army completely out of Prussia.

Also in August, to the South, Russia engaged Austria-Hungary with much better success. The Russian Army quickly shattered their front line on the border of Galacia, forcing the Austrian army to retreat. On September 3, 1914, the Southern Russian Army captured Lemberg, the capital of Galacia (present-day L'vov in Western Ukraine). Undaunted by success, the southern army continued to push on to Cracow (present-day Kraków of Poland) and aimed to continue into Silesia (South-Western portion of the German Empire — present-day Czechoslovakia).

Russian artillery bombardment of Galicia

Shortly after the fall of Lemberg, General Hindenburg assembled a new army in Eastern Prussia, designated the Ninth German Army, to assist Austria and prevent the Russian Army from advancing on Silesia. The Ninth aimed to cut straight through Poland (a territory of Russia), capture Warsaw, and continue on into Galicia to engage the Russian Southern Army.

Once the German Ninth army got underway, it met extremely heavy resistance in Poland. Despite seven months of intense fighting the army was unable to capture Warsaw. Meanwhile, to the South, the Russian Southern Army was unable to penetrate Silesia but kept hold of Galicia.

The German High Command, realising a war with two fronts would be impossible maintain, told the troops on the Western Front to dig in and hold their ground — a shifted their attention to Russia. By September 1915, two-thirds of the German Army were deployed on the Eastern front.

The German offensive opened on April 15 (28), 1915, and sent the Russian Army, short of ammunition and supplies, falling back to the East.[...] On June 9 (22) Lemberg was recaptured. With the Russian Southern Army front compromised and in retreat, on June 30 (July 12) the German Twelfth Army, coming from the NorthWest (East Prussia and Pomerania) spearheaded into Poland. The Russian and Polish soldiers in Poland were being crushed.

After a month of desperate battle, the Russian Ministry of War conceded to let their troops retreat from Poland on July 9 (22), 1915. The German Army followed at the heels of the retreating Russians, but by the end of September the German advance halted to reinforce all the gains it had made: the new front was established from the Southern border of the Russian state of Moldavia straight up to kilometers outside Riga in Latvia. Poland and Lithuania, inhabitited by some 23 million people, had been lost to Germany.

Amid increasingly tense political protests in Russia, General Sukhomlinov (Minister of War) was arrested in the beginning of 1916 (though released in the following Autumn), and was replaced by General Alexis Polivanov. In August, Tsar Nicholas dismissed Nikolai Kikolaevich and assumed personal command of the Russian Military.

On May 22 (June 4), 1916, Russian launched its second and last major offensive of the war. The Russian Army opened offensive operations along an enormous front: from Pinsk (in SouthWest Byelorussia) to the Russian border with Romania — an advance nearly 400 kilometers long. The advance continued for ten weeks, inflicting heavy loses on the Austrian-Hungarian Army whose efforts in the main had been re-directed to fighting in Italy. Despite the Russian offensive, however, the front remained largely intact.

Domestic protests continued in Russia, breaking out in masse with the new offensive. The government responded with political shuffling: several Generals, adminstrators, etc, were dismissed. Workers, peasants and soldiers, remained in unwavering support of ending the war. Thousands were arrested.

[...]

Russian soldiers running from advancing German troops (July, 1917)

[...]

On October 26, 1917, the Soviet government issued a decree of peace, insisting that all belligerent powers open immediate negotiations for a democratic peace without annexations, and guarantee the right of every nation to self-determination (Russia was the only nation to do so at the end of the war, allowing all the former territories of Russia to self-determination. Independence was short lived however, as each republic was later incorporated/annexed into the Soviet Union by Stalin.) . The Entente refused to recognise the Soviet government, and continued the war. The Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, ending four years of aggression between Russia and Germany.

Defeat: The loses Russia suffered in the world war were catastrophic. Between 900,000 and 2,500,000 Russians were killed. At least 1,500,000 Russians and possibly up to more than 5 million Russians were wounded. Nearly 4,000,000 Russian soldiers were held as POWs (Britain, France and Germany had 1.3 million POWs combined).

Economically Russia was devastated. 8,000,000,000 rubles in war debts were outstanding, strangling the national economy of its breath. Inflation soared; the gold reserves (then backing the currency) were nearly empty, revenues were exceedingly low while reconstruction costs were huge. Russia was on the verge of complete collapse.

[...]

Kulaks: The Russians that prospered the most during the war were peasant land-owners: Kulaks. Cunning muzhiks bribed local officials to prevent conscription and saw a field of opportunity open up during the war. While more and more peasants were sent to their deaths on the front lines, kulaks grabbed up their land in a free-for-all. By 1917, kulaks owned more than 90% of the arable land in European Russia, where once the majority or arable land had been in the hands of peasant communes.

The most valuable commodity throughout the war was grain, and kulaks understood this with absolute clarity: food prices climbed higher than any other commodity during the war. In 1916, food prices accelerated three times higher than wages, despite bumper harvests in both 1915 and 1916. The price of grain in 1916, already at two and a half rubles per pud, was anticipated to raise up to twenty five rubles per pud. Hoping to raise prices, the kulaks hoarded their food surplus.

Throughout 1916, the average urban labourer ate between 200 and 300 grams of food a day.

In 1917, the urban populations of Russia were allowed to buy only one pound of bread per adult, per day. In practice, workers sometimes went days without food. As a result of the Land Decree of October 26, 1917, when the peasants took back their land from the kulaks, food slowly came back into the cities again. Though the Kulaks were overwhelmed by the peasants at home and those returning from the front, many responded later in the year, during the coming Civil War.

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World War I - Russia Russia entered the first world war with the largest army in the world, standing at 1,400,000 soldiers; when fully mobilized the Russian army expanded to over 5,000,000 soldiers (though at the outset of war Russia could not arm all its soldiers, having a supply of 4.6 million rifles).

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During the early 19th century Russia developed trade relationships with other European countries and exported large amounts of grain. But most of the export revenue that flowed into the empire simply lined the pockets of aristocrats and powerful land-owners; it was not used as capital to develop an industrialised economy. Industrial projects and incentives were often proposed - but they were rarely embraced, since they threatened the financial interests of conservative landowners. There was some heavy industry - mining, steel production, oil and so on - but this was small when compared to Russia's imperial rivals: Britain, France and Germany. It took defeat in the Crimean War (1853-56) to expose the empire's lack of development and the urgent need for Russian industrialisation. Russian factories were unable to produce sufficient amounts of weapons, munitions or machinery. There was very little technical innovation; most of Russia's new technologies were imported from the West. And the empire's railway system was woefully inadequate, with insufficient rail lines and rolling stock to move men or equipment in large amounts.

The reforms embraced by Alexander II in the early 1860s were partly designed to stimulate transitions in the Russian economy. Emancipating the serfs (1861) was not just a social reform, it was also intended to release them from the land and the control of conservative land-owners. Alexander and his advisors anticipated that a large proportion of freed serfs would become a mobile labour force, able to relocate to areas where industrial workers were needed. They also believed that given greater freedom, the peasants would develop more efficient and productive ways of farming. One of the anticipated outcomes of 1861 was the emergence of a successful peasant class, the kulak. The kulak would be proto-capitalist: he would own larger tracts of land and more livestock or machinery; he would hire landless peasants as labourers; he would use more efficient farming techniques; and he would sell surplus grain for profit. But while the 1861 emancipation did release millions of peasants from their land, the strength of peasant communes prevented the widespread development of a kulak class.

The emancipation had significant social outcomes but it failed to contribute much to Russia's economic development. In the 1870s the government initiated several large infrastructure programs, particularly the construction of railways. The 1880s saw the emergency of Sergei Witte, a qualified mathematician with a proven track record of achievement, both in the tsarist bureaucracy and the private sector. In 1889 Witte was placed in charge of the Russian railway system, where he oversaw the planning and construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. By 1892 Witte was minister for transport, communication and finance. Identifying a need for capital investment, Witte made it easier for foreigners to invest in Russian industrial ventures. Existing barriers were removed, while foreign individuals and companies were offered incentives if they invested in certain industrial and manufacturing sectors. Witte also undertook currency reform: in 1897 he moved the Russian rouble to the gold standard, strengthening and stabilising it and improving foreign exchange. He also borrowed to fund public works and infrastructure programs including new railways, telegraph lines and electrical plants.

"The state participated directly in the nation's economy to an extent unequalled in any Western country. In 1899 the state bought almost two-thirds of all Russia's metallurgical production. By the early 20th century it controlled some 70 per cent of the railways and owned vast tracts of land, numerous mines and oil fields, and extensive forests. The national budgets from 1903 to 1913 indicated that the government received more than 25 per cent of its income from various holdings. Russia's economic progress in the eleven years of Witte's tenure as minister of finance was, by every standard, remarkable. Railway trackage virtually doubled, coal output in southern Russia jumped from 183 million poods in 1890 to 671 million in 1900."
Abraham Ascher, historian

By the late 1890s, Witte's reforms had had a visible impact on the Russian economy. Large amounts of foreign capital, mostly from France and Britain, had funded new plants and factories in St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and other cities. By 1900 around half of Russia's heavy industries were foreign-owned - but the Russian empire was the world's fourth-largest producer of steel and its second-largest source of petroleum. New railways allowed transport into remote parts of the empire, allowing the construction and operation of factories, mines, dams and other projects there. Russia's industrial economy had progressed more in one decade than it had in the previous century. Its development was so rapid that the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron later dubbed it "the great spurt".

But for all its advances, the economic transformation of Russia also delivered unforeseen consequences, some of them problematic for the regime. The construction of new factories drew thousands of landless peasants into the cities in search of work. In time they formed a rising social class: the industrial proletariat. Russia's cities were not equipped for the rapid urban growth that accompanied industrialisation. In the early 1800s only two Russian cities (St Petersburg and Moscow) contained more than 100,000 residents; by 1910 there were twelve cities of this size. In the decade between 1890 and 1900, St Petersburg swelled by around 250,000 people. This growth was not matched by the construction of new housing, so industrial employers had to house workers in ramshackle dormitories and tenements. Most lived in unhygienic and often freezing conditions; they ate meals of stale bread and buckwheat gruel (porridge) in crowded meal-houses. Things were even worse in the factories, where hours were long and the work was monotonous and dangerous. Witte's economic reforms had met, even exceeded national goals - but they also gave rise to a new working class that was exploited, poorly treated, clustered together in large numbers and therefore susceptible to revolutionary ideas.

1. For much of the 1800s Russia was a comparatively backward economy, dominated by agrarian production.
2. Defeat in the Crimean War triggered reforms, such as the abolition of serfdom to facilitate a mobile labour force.
3. The main instigator of economic reform was Sergei Witte, who attracted foreign investment in Russian industries.
4. Witte's changes triggered a marked growth in industrial production and the movement of workers into the cities.
5. In economic terms the policy reforms were successful and helped Russia 'catch up' to western European powers - but they also created an industrial working class prone to grievances and revolutionary ideas.

© Alpha History 2014. Content on this page may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use.
This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn, John Rae and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation:
J. Llewellyn et al, "Russian industrialisation" at Alpha History, https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/russian-industrialisation/, 2014, accessed [date of last access].

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During the early 19th century Russia developed trade relationships with other European countries and exported large amounts of grain. But most of the export revenue that flowed into the empire simply lined the pockets of aristocrats and powerful land-owners; it was not used as capital to develop an industrialised economy.

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Russia: 1921-1939

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The Soviet government launched a campaign to eradicate illiteracy and reorganized the school system. Education at all levels was free, but it taught communist ideology; it also combined book learning with physical work. The old high schools, called "gimnazia," were abolished and replaced by new secondary schools which combined general education with vocational training; both inculcated communist ideology.

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Moving vs still image

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Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camerais both an avant-garde experiment and a social commentating documentary, showing the power of modernity, transformation and life in an ideal Soviet city. Though its editing, courage and bare realism, it stands out as a beacon of silent film and a departure from the typical. Vertov succeeded in creating a snapshot of a day in Soviet Russia, a place constantly transitioning into the future.

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It also showed a growing advancement in what film editing could do, bringing a kind of transition from the continuity of American film to the haphazardness of experimental Soviet ideas. Vertov was also interested in the "international cinematic language" (Vertov, opening credits), as most of Russia's population consisted of peasants or illiterate citizens who couldn't grasp the plots of overseas silent films and narrative propaganda films, since they could not read the intertitles and text on screen. Most people can view Man With A Movie Camera and walk away understanding the meaning - or lack of - in the film.

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examples of interesting experimental editing

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Man With A Movie Camera is one of many Sviet films of the time to employ the Soviet Montage technique, a non-linear mash up of shots strategically cut to create emotion, scenes and experiment with just what film could do. The film is a constant display of movement; people, cars, machines, scenes and camera movement dominate the film at high speeds. Transitions, transformations and changes cannot exist without action, and the film's jarring, fast paced editing and onscreen business is full of it. Aside from the dizzying transitions and montage effect, Vertov and editor Yelizaveta Svilova also employed a great amount of juxtaposition. Unrelated shots are edited together in the film to create near scenarios, little narratives that are a trick of the eye with the shots cutting back and forth rapidly. Shots such as a woman waking cut with a train moving quickly are examples of this form of editing.The edits, while showing regular, everyday activities, could invoke interest, emotion and unease, adding a narrative to an otherwise story-less film.

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Munich ~ Rex Harrison & Margaret Lockwood

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Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (intro mix)

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A selection from the first part of the movie: the inventions of the train, the tram, electricity, the movie camera, the movie theater, the factory, etc. Workshop research as part of the http://parisinmotion.net/

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"This sequence occurs at the end of the film, and it is a good example of accelerating rhythm. Vertov and his editor, Elizaveta Svilova, push the cutting rate to an extreme speed, with some shots lasting only a single frame by the end of the sequence" ( Oliver Gaycken)

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Rhythm editing in Man With A Movie Camera

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Editing rhythm in The Man with a Movie Camera - Critical Commons

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The ending of Man With A Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov

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one of the few staged shots in the film, that garnered criticism against Vertov's absolute of film idealogy.

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Cinematic Orchestra - Awakening of a Woman (Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1929)

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Dziga Vertov didn't believe in fantasy or fiction in the world of filmmaking. He vowed for real cinema, without the need for scripts or actors, instead using experimental editing paired with clips and stills of real life. At the beginning of Man With A Movie Camera, Vertov's opening credits state that the film is "an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events, executed without the aid of intertitles, without the aid of scenario, without the aid of theater."  Vertov does just that at the exception of a view seemingly staged shots, such as ones of him behind the camera, and a girl dressing herself. The film shows bustling, prosperous and regular life during a time in Russia that was strife with change, both technological, political and economical. Russia was at a huge turning point after the first World War, with the fall of the Czar, the Bolshevik takeover of the government, and the growing number of countries attempting to break away and gain independence. Despite the growing tensions and future revolution, people in the film appear happy, busy and full of live, integrating with modern people, machinery and change, showing a perfect picture through its base film and heavy editing, of both Soviet ideals and impending chaos.

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<--Full film

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The former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

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The former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

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"Man With A Movie Camera" (1929) cover art

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"Man With A Movie Camera" (1929) cover art

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Dir. Dziga Vertov Editor(s): Yelizaveta Svilova, Dziga Vertov