Quite often in the press you can find staggering figures of the colossal audience success of Sergei Eisenstein's film “Battleship “Potemkin” in the USSR 1926.
In fact the Battleship Potemkin attracted considerably fewer viewers in the Soviet box office between 1926 and 1927 than the adventure film “Miss Mend” and the mystical melodrama “The Bear's Wedding”.
Here are accurate film distribution data for the years 1926-1927, given a rare edition (A.I. Krinitsky. The results of cinema construction in the USSR and the tasks of the Soviet cinema // The Roads of Cinema. The First All-Union Party Conference on Cinematography. Moscow: Tea-kino-pechat, 1929, p. 18):
“Battleship “Potemkin” in the USSR was seen by 2,100,000 viewers;
"Miss Mend" - 7,960,000; "Love in threesome" - 1,260,000 viewers" (Krinitsky, 1929: 18).
Battleship Potemkin. USSR, 1925. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein. Screenplay by Nina Agadzhanova-Shutko and Sergei Eisenstein. Actors: Alexander Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Grigory Alexandrov, Ivan Bobrov and others. In mass release in the USSR - from January 18, 1926. 2.1 million viewers during the first year of its release.
Miss Mend. USSR, 1926. Directed by Boris Barnet, Fedor Ozer. Scriptwriters: Boris Barnet, Fedor Otsep, Vasily Sakhnovsky (based on the novels of M. Shaginyan.) Actors: Boris Barnet, Natalya Glan, Igor Ilyinsky, Ivan Koval-Samborsky, Sergey Komarov, Tanya Mukhina, Vladimir Fogel and others. In mass distribution in the USSR - from October 26, 1926. 8 million viewers during the first year of screenings (admittedly, we may assume that the 1929 source gives the total of all three episodes of this film).
The Third Meshchanskaya / Love in threesome. USSR, 1927. Directed by Abram R0om. Scriptwriters Abram Room, Viktor Shklovsky. Actors: Nikolai Batalov, Ludmila Semyonova, Vladimir Fogel, Maria Yarotskaya, Leonid Yurenev and others. In mass distribution - from 15 March 1927. 1.3 million viewers during the first year of screenings.
To this we can add that according to R. Taylor and A. Prokhorov (Taylor R. Boris Shumyatsky and Soviet cinema in the 30s: ideology as entertainment of the masses // Film Studies Notes. 1989. № 3. Prokhorov A. Inherited Discourse: Paradigms of Stalinist Culture in Thaw Literature and Cinematography. St. Petersburg: Academic Project - DNA, 2007, p. 51) film “Bear's Wedding” (1925) in its first year gathered twice as many viewers as “Battleship Potemkin”, i.e. approximately 4 million viewers.
Bear's Wedding. USSR, 1925. Directed by Konstantin Eggert, Vladimir Gardin. Scriptwriters: Georgy Grebner, Anatoly Lunacharsky (based on Prosper Merimee's short story "Lokis"). Actors: Konstantin Eggert, Vera Malinovskaya, Natalya Rosenel, Alexandra Kartseva, Yury Zavadsky and others. In mass distribution - from January 25, 1926. 4 million viewers during the first year of its release.
However, there is nothing surprising here - in many cases films of entertainment genres reach an audience substantially larger than that of films with an ideological message...
P.S. A little more film statistics:
Dukelsky S.S. Report note to V.M. Molotov on the work of the Committee on Cinematography under the USSR Council of People's Commissars on historical and historically revolutionary subjects from April 15, 1939: the number of viewers in Soviet film distribution: "Alexander Nevsky" - 23 million, "At the Frontier" - 18 million, "Man with a Gun" - 17 million, "Professor Mamlock" - 16 million, "Great Glare" - 15 million.
Alexander Fedorov, 2021