The history of Soviet and Russian film criticism has more than a hundred years. Soviet film criticism knew the ups (in the 1920s, during the "thaw" and "perestroika"), a rigid Stalinist censorship stranglehold, and Brezhnev¿s era of stagnation. Russian film criticism of post-Soviet period still has a little more than a quarter century. However, during this time Russian film criticism, too, has gone through a number of transformations. This book is the first attempt of a retrospective analysis of Soviet / Russian and Western cinema reflections in the mirror of Soviet / Russian film criticism. Perhaps, the history of Russian film criticism will be written in a full volume someday. This book is just a sketch to this future history...