Editing Cinema of the Soviet Union (section)

==Censorship==
After the [[death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin|death of Stalin]], Soviet filmmakers were given a freer hand to film what they believed audiences wanted to see in their film's characters and stories. The industry remained a part of the government and any material that was found politically offensive or undesirable, was either removed, edited, reshot, or shelved. The definition of "socialist realism" was liberalized to allow development of more human characters, but communism still had to remain uncriticized in its fundamentals. Additionally, the degree of relative artistic liberality was changed from administration to administration.

Examples created by censorship include:

*Sergei Eisenstein's ''Ivan the Terrible'' Part II was completed in 1946 but was not released until 1958; 5 years after Stalin's death.
*Eisenstein's ''Alexander Nevsky'' was censored before the [[Operation Barbarossa|German invasion of the Soviet Union]] due to its depiction of a strong Russian leader defying an invading army of German [[Teutonic Knights]]. After the invasion, the film was released for propaganda purposes to considerable critical acclaim.
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