Cinematic models of the Cold War Apocalypse: The USSR and the USA

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of cultural models of the apocalypse, which were formed in Soviet and American cinema during the Cold War and reveal the mechanisms of representation of nuclear confrontation as one of the key mythologies of late modernity, and the results of the study make it possible to clarify the patterns of functioning of visual narrative structures through which the cultures of the USSR and the USA articulated different strategies for understanding the global threat, based on different political, value and anthropological foundations. The paper reveals that the Soviet model of the apocalypse is characterized by an emphasis on moral and ethical responsibility, collective subjectivity, and the humanistic potential of culture, which is manifested in the dominance of motives for spiritual ordeal, cultural memory preservation, and critical reflection on scientific and technological progress, while the American model relies on individualistic and techno-futuristic patterns, representing the nuclear threat as a consequence. technological risk, political instability and existential vulnerability of the subject, placed in a space of total catastrophe. Based on the concept of cultural memory and reconstruction of the utopian imaginary, the paper concludes that the differences between the two models of the nuclear apocalypse are due not only to ideological factors, but also to the specific features of cultural codes that shaped ideas about human dignity, political responsibility and the limits of what is possible. The research materials show that cinema acted not only as a means of visualizing certain scenarios of the future, but also as a mechanism for forming collective ideas about a future in which the possibility of total destruction required continuous cultural interpretation, since at the level of mass consciousness nuclear war was interpreted as a metaphor for civilizational fragility and at the same time as a tool for self-identification of societies located on different sides of the global ideological conflict.

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