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the RedArmy freeing a village from the bandits (basmachi) (90). Khodjaev’s anticolonial filmBefore Dawn (1933), about the 1916 revolt in Central Asia, was never released: the director was shot in 1937. Ganiev managed to avoid being purged, despite his bourgeois class origins. He fought back, accusing his director of photography, Fridrikh Verigo-Dorovskii, of disrespecting Uzbek culture by referring to plov, the national dish, as “shit” (132). The films were intended to discredit religion, but they had to tread carefully to avoid alienating the audience. Initially the emphasiswasmore anticlerical than antireligious, but this changed in the 1930s. The films also included a strong element of class analysis, with the prerevolutionary wealthy class of bais serving as the arch villains, oppressing the peasants but also cheating the Russian colonists. A pioneering work, Dreiu’s book is a most valuable contribution to the history of Soviet cinema and the dilemmas of Soviet modernization in Central Asia.