History of the Russian Blockbuster: Cinema, Memory and Love for the Motherland

The recovery of the Russian film industry after the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent economic and cultural crisis was accompanied by the strengthening of patriotic and nationalistic tendencies. Having adapted Hollywood methods to the material of Russian history, by the mid-2000s the cinema of the new Russia began to produce historical blockbusters. These films were subordinated to the main task - to create the image of a strong country that needed to be revived in order to be proud of it again. The book examines the Russian blockbuster as a holistic cultural phenomenon and at the same time a point where politics, economics, history and ideology intersect. Historian Stephen M. Norris, a professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, sets out to look at the history of Russia in the 21st century through the prism of films and to understand how the state used them to construct a new national identity.