Humanities & Social Sciences 3 (2017 10) 330-347 ~ ~ ~ УДК 82.09 Filming the Classics: Tolstoy’s Resurrection as ‘Thaw’ Narrative David Gillespie* University of Bath Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom Received 21.10.2016, received in revised form 10.01.2016, accepted 03.02.2017 Russian film adaptations of the literary heritage have been part of Russian cultural history for over a hundred years, with works by Pushkin, Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoevskii adapted for the screen before the Revolution and the dawn of the ‘Golden Age’ of Soviet cinema. <...> The director Mikhail Shveitser (1920-2000) came to specialize in adapting Russian literary works for the screen, and his film of Tolstoy’s 1899 novel Resurrection (Воскресение) was his first attempt to film the classical heritage, and one of the first Soviet adaptations of Tolstoy’s work. <...> Released in two parts in 1960 and 1962, the film is a faithful rendering of the plot of Tolstoy’s novel about a repentant nobleman, social injustice and the corruption of the Russian legal system. <...> Moreover, it also has a contemporary relevance, and explicitly references the injustices of the penal system under Stalin and the liberalization of the postStalin ‘Thaw’. <...> The film Resurrection, consequently, serves as an example of the particular Russian approach to filming classical literature by not only bringing the literary heritage to life on the screen, but also making cultural politics the focus of attention for the time in which it was made. <...> Introduction Resurrection (Воскресение) was the first of Tolstoy’s “big” novels to be adapted for the Soviet screen (not counting the filmed MKhAT version of Anna Karenina, directed in 1953 by Tat’iana Lukashevich). <...> Released in two parts in 1960 and 1962, it was directed by the relative newcomer Mikhail Shveitser (1920-2000). <...> The release of a film about a miscarriage of justice, arbitrary punishment and the iniquities of the legal system at this time in post-Stalin history © Siberian Federal University. <...> The Director Mikhail (real name Moisei) Abramovich Shveitse was born in Perm’ on 16 March 1920, and studied in VGIK (Vsesoiuznyi gosudarstvennyi institut kinematografii: the All-Union State Cinematographic Institute) during the War under Sergei Eisenstein, David Gillespie. <...> Filming the Classics: Tolstoy’s Resurrection as ‘Thaw’ Narrative graduating in 1943. <...> That year he <...>