«Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important» is a famous line attributed to Vladimir Lenin, which became one of the key ideological slogans of Soviet cultural policy. The statement refers to a conversation between Lenin and Anatoly Lunacharsky (the People's Commissar of Enlightenment) in February 1922.
The history of this quote is notable in that it became known not from any direct record by Lenin himself, but from Lunacharsky's recollections, set out in a letter to G.M. Boltyansky dated January 29, 1925 (a year after Lenin's death). Fragments of this letter were first published in Boltyansky's book «Lenin and Cinema» in 1925, and the full text of the letter appeared in the journal «Soviet Cinema», issue 1-2, in 1933.
In its original context, the phrase read: «...you're known among us as a patron of the arts, so you should firmly remember that of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important». This was said to Lunacharsky at the end of a conversation about the tasks of developing communist cinema. Lenin stressed the need for a balance between entertaining and scientific films, noted the importance of newsreels, and insisted on censorship that would keep out "counter-revolutionary and immoral" films.
Interestingly, in popular culture the quote is often distorted and cited in a mistaken form: «As long as the people remain illiterate, of all the arts the most important for us are cinema and the circus». It's precisely this common inaccuracy that the author of the novel is referencing when he points to «the most important of the arts, cinema and the circus».
The ideological weight of this phrase in Soviet culture is hard to overstate — it legitimized filmmaking as a powerful tool for propaganda and mass enlightenment. It's no accident that the 1920s saw the rapid rise of Soviet cinema, producing directors like Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and other masters whose work became classics of world cinema.
By 1993, when the novel is set, this quote had already become firmly embedded in the cultural code and was often used ironically, as a symbol of a bygone era of totally ideologized art.