motion-picture director whose outstanding films deal with the role of the Communist Party in the Russian Civil War (1918–20) in a style that foreshadows the grand-scale Russian films of the 1930s. Most of these were codirected with Georgy Vasilyev (1899–1946); together they were known as the “V Brothers,” although they were not related.

Sergey graduated from the Institute of Screen Art, Leningrad, and by the mid-1920s was directing documentaries with Georgy Vasilyev. In 1934 they wrote, produced, and directed their most important picture, Chapayev, a sweeping Civil War tale of a Bolshevik guerrilla leader that influenced the “big films” that followed.