In the spring of 1968, when Kerala was given the opportunity to inaugurate a retrospective of Soviet films, the communist government led by EMS Namboodiripad seized it unreservedly. At a time when India was being courted by the Cold War superpowers, Kerala was one state that overwhelmingly leaned towards Moscow rather than Washington DC.Nine Russian films were screened in Trivandrum and other parts of the state, beginning with Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent epic Battleship Potemkin. For Kerala, the retrospective was an opportunity to showcase a cinema that was closely associated with the state’s political culture. For Moscow, it was part of a much longer effort to make Soviet cinema – and the system it represented – more attractive to Indian audiences.The staging of the retrospective, which commemorated 50 years of Soviet cinema, was the result of years of Soviet efforts to popularise Russian films in a country where the post-colonial elite could watch and easily comprehend English films.The Soviets were acutely aware that the Americans could reach a significant section of Indians through Hollywood since there was no language barrier, giving them an advantage in promoting Western capitalism over Russian communism.“The USSR tried its best to convince Indians that a socialist country could be a superpower and that Indians too could achieve the same level of development if they took the Communist path,” historian Severyan Dyakonov wrote in his 2015 master’s thesis at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.To overcome the language barrier, and reach a wider audience, Moscow initially explored dubbing Russian films into Indian language. The Soviets hoped this would replicate the massive popularity that Indian films, particularly those directed by and starring Raj Kapoor, had achieved in the Soviet Union after being dubbed in Russian. However, the process proved to be far too expensive.The relationship between the two film industries gained new momentum in the early 1960s, when the Sino-Soviet split damaged relations between Moscow and Beijing and the Russians made a strong attempt to expand film cooperation with India.A poster of 'Battleship Potemkin'.At the time, a special licence was required for countries to distribute their films in India. From 1960, this licence depended on the reciprocal exchange of films, according to Dyakonov. This enabled the Soviets to sell as many films as they bought from India.“The reciprocal film exchange was a strategy of the Indian government to reach new markets for its own film industry,” Dyakonov added.Oscar winners like Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace and Destiny of a Man found their way to Indian cinemas with English subtitles. But it was in 1967 that Moscow made a more ambitious attempt to bring Soviet cinema to India: the Soviet government reached out to the National Film Archives of India in Poona to organise a Soviet film retrospective.Cultural diplomacyWhen the National Film Archives agreed to stage the festival, the Soviets initially focused on two main themes: the Second World War, or the Great Patriotic War as they called it, and socialism. One Soviet classic extolling the values of socialism was Mother, a 1926 film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and adapted from Maxim Gorky’s popular novel of the same name.But the organisers in India wanted a wider picture of Soviet cinema.When the National Film Archives shared the potential list of films with the Federation of Film Societies of India, its assistant secretary, Basu Chatterjee, who would later become an award-winning director, called for films from the various centres of production across the USSR.“For example, Good Morning, This is I (Armenia), Contest (Turkmenia), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Ukraine) and White Caravan (Georgia),” he wrote in a letter to the National Film Archives. “Only The Two from Latvia is included in the current list.”Chatterjee also argued that films such as Bondarchuk’s Destiny of a Man, which had already been screened in India, did not need to be included. A final list of 15 films was agreed upon, and the Federation of Film Societies agreed to try to also get them screened in smaller towns, where audiences had little access to international cinema.The logistics of moving the films across India were almost as important as the selection itself. In February 1968, the 35mm prints of the 15 chosen films were sent to Santa Cruz airport in Bombay, with the government requesting customs to clear them without collecting duties.