May Day has an interesting history in the United States. May-related celebrations marking the start of spring[1] go back to the Romans c. 238 BCE where it was a festival honoring Flora, the goddess of flowers and blossoming plants.[2] A much later[3] May Day celebrations featuring flowers and maypoles were brought to the early United States by British and Scandinavian immigrants. The Pilgrims, who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts, promptly used armed force in 1622 to shut down May Day celebrations in nearby Merrymount, chopping down their maypole and exiling the town’s leader. Things settled down after that and maypole-based May Day celebrations spread throughout the U.S.
Then came the labor movement of the late 1800s, during which workers went on strike in Chicago, on May 1, 1886, demanding an 8-hour workday. The peaceful demonstrations quickly got violent on both sides (with the police supporting the business owners). This culminated in the Haymarket Affair[4] where a bomb was thrown at police who were breaking up a labor rally, leading to a riot that ended in several deaths and injuries. Four of the labor leaders were subsequently executed, though it was never proved that they were responsible. In 1889, the Second International[5]Congress meeting in Paris set May 1st as International Workers’ Day, a day to celebrate workers in honor of the striking Chicago workers and the Haymarket Affair.
The Congress decides to organize a great international demonstration, so that in all countries and in all cities on one appointed day, the toiling masses shall demand of the state authorities the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours, as well as the carrying out of other decisions of the Paris Congress. Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon for May 1, 1890, by the American Federation of Labor at its Convention in St. Louis, December 1888, this day is accepted for the international demonstration. The workers of the various countries must organize this demonstration according to the conditions prevailing in each country.
May already had a U.S. holiday – Decoration Day – established on May 5, 1868, by Major General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic to honor the dead of the US Civil War.[6] After World War I, Decoration Day was expanded to include all US soldiers who died in service and the holiday began its gradual evolution into Memorial Day.[7],[8] Meanwhile, in an effort to distance the US from the socialist roots of the holiday it inspired, on June 24, 1894 US President Grover Cleveland designated the first Monday in September as Labor Day.[9] US President Dwight D. Eisenhower even tried to rebrand May 1 as Law Day in 1958, a day to recognize the importance of the rule of law. It turned out to be a rather dull holiday, lacking the mattress sales and parades that now mark Memorial Day and so faded from memory.
Now, May Day had two identities – flowers/maypoles and labor unions/socialist politics. Despite its American origins, no country turned harder in the direction of the socialist May Day than the Soviet Union in the era of the Cold War. What began as a public holiday with demonstrations of worker solidarity evolved into a propaganda opportunity to show off Soviet technological achievements and military might when the May Day celebrations were extended to include Victory Day military parades on May 9. These parades commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II[10] and were iconic Soviet events featuring large displays of soldiers and military hardware (tanks, missiles, planes, etc.) parading through Red Square. May Day and Victory Day celebrations did not end with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. They remain an important political holiday in Russia, its former satellites, and other communist countries.
But the Soviet Union was not just about tank parades,[11] they also made movies, and not just tractor musicals.[12]The Soviets[13] made significant contributions to early cinema and advanced the theory of montage (film editing), as featured in the work of Sergei Eisenstein and demonstrated by the Kuleshov Effect.[14] They were also pioneers in documentary filmmaking, particularly with the “cinema of facts” movement.[15] There is also a direct link between Soviet cinema and the later French and American New Wave movements.[16] According to Vladimir Lenin, “The cinema is for us the most important of the arts.”
Perhaps the best-known Soviet film is Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). Its Odessa steps sequence has been referenced and parodied in numerous Western films, from The Godfather (1972) and The Untouchables (1987) to Bananas (1970) and Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994). Soviet filmmaking declined during World War II,[17]both in volume and artistic merit, but came back strong during the Cold War that followed. Despite their cultural differences, Soviet films can offer Western audiences a rich cinematic experience through their bold visual storytelling, emotional depth, and inventive techniques. Beyond their historical context, these works remain engaging and thought-provoking, blending artistry and narrative in ways that still resonate with modern viewers. According to Ciara Moloney, writing for Current Affairs magazine, “Soviet cinema is a vast, varied landscape, much too large to grasp in your hand.”
To assemble our list of the best Soviet cinema (and television)[18] we culled through recommendations on Reddit, top-rated films on IMDb, and best of lists from Current Affairs and Far Out magazines, 5AM StoryTalk, Gateway to Russia, and ITMO University. Our list includes movies, shorts, and TV series; dramas, comedies, and cartoons. Many of these programs can be streamed on YouTube, Soviet Movies Online, and Russian Film Hub. All of them can be found in the EIDR Content ID registry, along with descriptive metadata and links to third-party services for more information.
[1] The 1st of May being near a “cross quarter day,” roughly midway between the vernal equinox (day and night of equal length) and the summer solstice (longest day of the year).
[2] Being Roman, it quickly devolved into nude performances by the city’s prostitutes and gladiatorial combat in the Circus Maximus, but then didn’t everything?
[3] And much less naked, though still with a lot of drinking, now overseen by the designated “Lord of Misrule”.
[4] AKA, the Haymarket Riot.
[5] AKA, the Socialist International, a conference of socialist and labor political parties and trade unions.
[6] By decorating their graves to honor them.
[7] It was not officially renamed Memorial Day until 1967 and did not become the un-official start of the US summer holidays until it was moved to the last Monday in May in 1971.
[8] One military holiday was not enough for the United States, so in 1938 Armistice Day was established in November to honor World War I veterans. (Which, at the time, were still veterans of The Great War.) In 1954, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day to honor all US veterans. The subtle distinction between Memorial Day and Veterans Day is that Memorial Day honors dead veterans while Veterans Day honors all veterans, both living and dead.
[9] Now the un-official end of the US summer holidays, following which students typically return to school.
[10] AKA, the Great Patriotic War.
[11] Including its rather forceful tank parades into Hungary in 1956 to put down the Hungarian Revolution and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to end the “Prague Spring”, a short-lived period of social and political liberalization in the Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
[12] These were pretty much what they sound like: propaganda films produced in the Soviet Union and East Germany from 1930–1970 that celebrated socialist ideals through song and dance with workers living in synch with machinery, including farm tractors. A typical example is the musical-comedy Traktoristy AKA Tractor Drivers (1939).
[13] This is not Russian cinema, though that is included. Rather, it is the collective output of the USSR and its satellite states from 1922–1991.
[14] After Lev Kuleshov who showed that two, untreated shots took on additional meaning not present in either shot when they were shown together.
[15] Where documentaries focused on direct observation or “cinéma verité”.
[16] The French New Wave ran from 1958-1964 and was followed by the American New Wave from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s.
[17] The impacts of World Wars I and II on European filmmaking are key factors in the eventual dominance of Hollywood in the media and entertainment industry.
[18] As with most things, good does not always mean popular (and vice vera) and popular Soviet films is not the same as popular films in the Soviet Union. For a list of top-performing films at the Soviet box office, please see Russian Wikipedia.