Dialectics of the past and the future in the utopian film discourse on the example of the creation of E. Ryazanov

The article concerns the state of utopian discourse in Soviet culture in the transitional moments of its development (the era of the “Thaw” and “Perestroika”). The methodology of the research is based on the statement that memory is essential to the construction of utopia. The drafted analytical optics are used to examine cinema as a utopian topos the interprets and models social reality. Having analysed two films of selected periods, the author displays how the appeal to the Soviet past and its reinterpretation contributed to the maintenance of the utopian project in its quest for a “bright future.” However, the nostalgia awakened in this way for the inspiring action of the ideal and the utopian impulse accompanying it eventually turned out to be squeezed out of the field of action into the inner world of humans.