Ballad of the Dnieper

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Description: The first hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper-Dnieperstroi. Originally built in the 1930s, it was destroyed by the Nazis in World War 2 and rebuilt by the youth of the USSR after the War.
Duration: 19 mins 45 secs
Director: Anatoly Slesarenko
Credits: Script: Anatoly Slesarenko. Camera: Isaac Katzman. Editor: B. Klinchenko. Sound: G. Chupakov. Music: Yuri Vinnik, Alexander Ponomarev.
Year: 1967
Subjects: War devastated countries, Air warfare, Communism, Dams, Nazism, USSR, Reconstruction (buildings), Hydroelectric power stations
Segment 1: The Dnieperstroi hydroelectric power station in the 1930s. The huge dam with water pouring through it. The massed pylons. The dam from below. The river. The dam illuminated at night. A dramatic superimposed statue of Lenin with the leader's arm outstretched, pointing at the dam. But the dam is on the verge of destruction by Nazi bombers. A fleet of aircraft in the evening sky. Two planes peel off. The dam is bombed. The ruins of the power station. The dam had operated for only nine years, lighting workers' apartments and cooperative farmers' homes. After World War 2 the Soviet Union set about rebuilding the dam. Men in winter coats and hats walk down a snowy track at the dam, amongst them Academician Ivan Alexandrov, who created the Dnieperstroi project, and Alexander Winter, the first Director of the hydroelectric station, also an Academician. Shots of demonstrations with flags and banners. Workers filing off a train and boat. Maxim Gorki visits the construction site.
Segment 2: A sign is placed at the site. Rafts of logs on the river. Goods trains arriving. A workman drills through rock. Trains in motion. Lifting cranes in use. Rocks being blasted with explosives. Concrete being laid and packed down by men trampling on it. The 'concrete dance' became a famous part of the work of Young Communist League members in the 1930s. Flowing water. Riveters at work. Train tracks being laid. General shots of the vast construction underway. A long tracking shot along the top of the unfinished dam shows the impressive extent of it. Much of the music for this section is an orchestration of Rachmaninov's Prelude in C Sharp Minor, opus 3 No 2.
Segment 3: The dam was commissioned on 10 October 1932. Huge crowds celebrate the event attended by President Mikhail Kalinin, People's Commissar Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who was Head of Heavy Industry and Construction, and Communist Party and Government officials of the Ukraine. A brass band plays the National Anthem. Massed crowds in the stands. A steam engine crosses the dam. The vast power station from above.
Segment 4: Nazi aircraft in the sky. The bombing and ruins repeated. Churning water. In the 1940s a steam train carries workers to restore the dam and power plant. Men and women workers disembark from a train carrying their luggage. Workers at work on site. Reliable contact had to be established between the two banks of the river. Water powering over the ruins. A man climbs up to the top of a steel-reinforced tower. Today that man, Andrei Yevgrafov, and his son are building the Togliatti Automobile Plant on the Volga River. He has worked on many hydroelectric station sites over the last twenty years. We see him on a boat looking across the water. He and his wife look at photographs from a recent project in Afghanistan. The Dnieperstroi climb is shown again. His son throws a rope across to another tower. A man pulls himself by cable cage from one tower to the other. High above the water men walk along the wooden footbridge which succeeded this. Women who came to work on the project from collective farms in the Dnieper area. A banner is raised above the dam construction site. In spring 1945 a torrential flood struck the site. The flood waters pour over the unfinished dam. Divers who plugged a break in the dam. The water rose above the dangerous 37-metre mark. Women workers on the dam moving to try and plug a break with concrete. Eventually they saved the dam.
Segment 5: Two 'Order of Lenin' decorated women, workers on the site, in the turbine hall of the finished dam. They are seen operating equipment. Women and men working on the construction site. A small steam engine crossing the dam. Construction shots. The iced-up dam of a severe winter caused problems for the construction workers. Men pull on heavy clothing and prepare to brave the icy waters in an attempt to stop a break. Among the men was engineer Danielovich who is seen today driving in the city. He is now a seasoned engineer who has worked on many big schemes. He is shown on site at his current project, the construction of the Kiev Stadium in Ukraine. In the hazardous icy waters of the dam, he and four comrades struggle to stop the break with sandbags. Eventually they plug and seal the hole.
Segment 6: When the Nazis retreated in 1941 they planted 20 tons of explosives under the dam. Tunnel shots in the dam. Soviet sappers had spotted the charge but had to find the wire leading to it. Exterior shots of the dam. The wire was not found inside the dam. An unknown soldier dived into the water outside, located the wire and severed it. But when he surfaced an enemy sniper killed him. The monument to this unknown soldier with its eternal flame. Collage of images of the dam and flocks of birds soaring around it. Some of the men and women shown earlier, who rebuilt the dam, throw bouquets of flowers into the river in honour of the unknown soldier. The final sequence shows a statue of Lenin with right arm aloft and the dam and the traffic moving along its road bridge behind him.
Persistent URL: http://edina.ac.uk/purl/isan/0002-0000-2476-0000-0-0000-0000-0
Written and compiled by the British Universities Film & Video Council © BUFVC 2005
Subject classification by University of Edinburgh Library © 2006