Soviet Napoleonic War Films Suvorov & Kutuzov

I was interested in learning more about Soviet opinions on Czar Alexander I, a most intriguing character, who has been called the Jacobin Czar. He combined Romantic Enlightenment rhetoric about liberation, with brutal Romanov autocracy.

Stalin held a negative opinion of both Peter the Great and Alexander I, who he considered one-sided Westernizers.

http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv3n2/ivant.htm

Quote:

Stalin. Your tsar has come out as being indecisive, he resembles Hamlet. Everybody prompts him as to what is to be done, and he himself does not take any decision... Tsar Ivan was a great and a wise ruler, and if he is compared with Ludwig XI (you have read about Ludwig XI who prepared absolutism for Ludwig XIV), then Ivan the Terrible is in the tenth heaven. The wisdom of Ivan the Terrible is reflected by the following: he looked at things from the national point of view and did not allow foreigners into his country, he barricaded the country from the entry of foreign influence. By showing Ivan the Terrible in this manner you have committed a deviation and a mistake. Peter Ist was also a great ruler, but he was extremely liberal towards foreigners, he opened the gate wide to them and allowed foreign influence into the country and permitted the Germanisation of Russia. Catherine allowed it even more. And further. Was the court of Alexander I really a Russian court? Was the Court of Nicolaus I a Russian court? No, they were German courts.

I came across an interesting work:
"Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution
By Evgeniĭ Aleksandrovich Dobrenk"
http://books.google.com/books?id=plyhcV ... ps&f=false

It includes a depiction of Russian Napoleonic Generals Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov.

As Stalin said “Let the heroic images of our great forebears—Alexander Nevsky, Dmitri Donskoi, Kuzma Minin, Dmitri Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov—inspire you in this war! May you be inspired by the victorious banner of the Great Lenin!”

Dobrenko claims that prior to 1941, Napoleon's invasion of Russia was actually considered progressive by Soviet historians, relative to Czardom.

I understand the defense of Mikhail Kutuzov, as the 1812 War was a war of national defense, in the same way that Marx and Engels considered the 1813 German War of Liberation to be progressive.

But Alexander Suvorov is a bit of a stretch, as Dobrenk put it 'here they fight for the Fatherland.... in the Swiss Alps." Suvorov was a brilliant military Generalissimo, who never lost a battle. But as far as politics goes, he was part of the Czarist reaction to crush Republican France. These French Revolutionary Wars battles were in 1798, before the Brumaire Coup. The Feudal Autocracies of Europe united in a Holy Crusade to strangle the infant Revolutionary Republic. Dobrenk argues that the celebration of Suvorov in 1941, reflected the Stalinist doctrine of taking the defensive battle onto the soil of the enemy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suvorov_(film)

And, incidentally, cemented the most reactionary block in 19th century Europe.