Magnitogorsk, in the southern Urals, was a major element of Josef Stalin’s program of rapid Soviet industrialization in the 1930s. The town, situated in a region rich in iron ore, was chosen as the site of a massive new iron-and-steel production complex designed and built after American models. By the 1940s the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMR) was the largest steel company in the USSR, and supplied much of the metal for the Soviet war effort. As this documentary by Swiss director Gabriel Tejedor shows, the company, or kombinat, is now privatized rather than state-owned, but remains the city’s dominant economic and social entity, employing nearly half the working-age residents and sponsoring most public events.
But as is also made abundantly clear from comments about frequent accidents among the workers, the plant has not been greatly modernized, and its impact on the environment has been devastating, making the city one of the most polluted in the world and leading to significant health problems in the population.
Tejenor reveals all this not through analysis and narration, but simply by observing the city’s rhythms in the lives of several residents and their families. Burly Guenia works at MMR; he and his wife have two children, an older son and a young daughter Dasha, who suffers from a learning disability. They hope to move to Novosibirsk, which also houses a factory but is less polluted and has a school where Dasha can get the special instruction she requires. Guenia’s brother Sasha and his wife have a rather sullen teen daughter; he also works at the plant and spends much of his free time at a dance school sponsored by MMR and run by Lena, who is rehearsing her students in a routine they will perform at the annual Steelworker Day celebration mounted by the company.
The members of all three families participate in the town’s parade to mark Victory Day, commemorating the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, but at meals where they are joined by other family members, some political differences emerge, with older folks generally enthusiastic about President Putin while the younger generation expresses mild misgivings about the ways things are going. Tejedor follows Guenia, Sasha, and Lena up to the Steelworkers Day rally, where Sasha’s troupe performs and company executives announce plans for accelerated cleanup of the air and water while Guenia’s plan to move falls apart.
Without becoming heavily didactic, Kombinat conveys the importance of familial and societal tradition in contemporary Russian life, as well as the reality that while capitalism has replaced communism as the controlling economic principle, the workers still remain largely controlled, even if less blatantly than was once the case. Recommended. Aud: P, C.