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Abstract

Economic modernization, whose heyday in Russia came at the turn of the 19th20th centuries, accelerated the creation of a wide variety of joint-stock companies, including cinematographic ones. Having become a mass spectacle, Russian cinema developed into a form of art that was technological in nature and oriented largely toward the broad public. This shaped private business’s interest in this form of entertainment, which offered a real opportunity to earn substantial profits by drawing the urban lower classes into this kind of leisure. One line of development of Russian cinema, actively promoted by Professor I. Kh. Ozerov, a board member of the „A. Khanzhonkov & Co.“ joint-stock cinematographic company, was its use not so much for entertainment as for educational and upbringing purposes. To this end, Ozerov actively promoted the production of educational films and their inclusion in the school curriculum. Although these ideas were generally supported by the Ministry of Education and by some of the company’s shareholders, they remained unrealized owing to the outbreak of the First World War.