Why did Intolerance influence filmmakers in the Soviet Union?

D.W. Griffith’s 1916 epic Intolerance served as a foundational text for Soviet filmmakers, who studied it extensively to understand and refine the art of film editing.12

In the early years of the Soviet Union, the teacher Lev Kuleshov obtained a print of the film and screened it repeatedly for his students in the "Kuleshov workshop". This analysis was instrumental for several reasons:34

• Mastery of Structure: Students memorized the film’s complex shot structures and practiced rearranging its multilayered, cross-cut editing sequences on paper in hundreds of different combinations.34
• Development of Montage: By analyzing Griffith's work, Soviet theorists like Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Vsevolod Pudovkin were able to move beyond intuitive narrative editing. They evolved these techniques into a formal theory of montage, where the juxtaposition of images was used to create symbolic, emotional, or intellectual meaning rather than just chronological storytelling.34
• Technical Education: Because the young Soviet film industry faced severe shortages of equipment and film stock, the ability to analyze and "rebuild" Griffith’s sophisticated editing patterns on paper provided a vital training method for a generation of directors.34