Yes, Red Army would watch movies though less regularly than their counterparts in the German or Western Allied armies. While the Germans e.g. used film vans, meaning vans where a cinema could be deployed – I have written on this before here – the Red Army didn't have any vans but what they did have was the revival of a tradition from the Russian Civil War and subsequently the NEP: The so-called Agit-Train and also one Agit-Boat.

Agit here stand for agitation and is related to the Soviet concept of "Agitprop", a portmanteau of "agitation" and "propaganda". Agitprop as a concept originated before the term "propaganda" got its negative ring to it (though it was certainly among the factors why it got that negative connotation in the first place) and referred to the concept of spreading propaganda through all kinds of media with agitation what was being done in person. The Soviet state after the Bolshevik revolution tended to very heavily mobilize all forums that were available to them to spread their messages and gain support for their ideology and policies (including a literacy campaign).

Part of that effort during the Civil War and throughout the 1920s were a series of trains, the so-called agit-trains, and the before mentioned agit-boat that toured all parts of the USSR. These trains consisted of about 16 to 18 train cars that were brightly painted with pro-Bolshevik motives and also flagged. Inside, these trains had a library, a selection of newspapers and pamphlets, art exhibitions, photo exhibitions, reading rooms, a dark room to develop photographs, and a – crucially for this question – a movie theater.

The program for these trains often involved also high ranking Bolshevik politicians speaking to the citizens and soldiers of the USSR as part of the larger agitprop program. And while this list included such people as People's Commissar of Justice D. K. Kursky or People's Commissar of the Interior G. I. Petrovsky in the Civil War, the real hit seem to have been the movie showings.

According to official Soviet statistics for the first five agit-trains used during the revolution, they conducted movie showings for over 2 million people during their time in service. It seems for the Second World War when the concept was revitalized and re-used on the front lines, there no statistics for an audience but one can assume that the movies too were the best visited part of the program.

Also, the Soviet authorities during both uses of the agit-trains went basically all out with whom they hired to do the art-work etc. The list of artists who painted these agit-trains includes among others such internationally recognized Bolshevik artists like Vladimir Mayakovsky and El Lissitsky and the managers of their film division included among others pioneers of Soviet and international cinema such as Dziga Vertov.

It is because of the involvement of these people as well as for the novel concept of communicating political messages in such a way that most research seems to focus heavily on the first period of their use during the revolution and the 1920s instead of their use during World War 2. This is especially apparent in that it seems not possible to find a list of movies they showed during the war.

While no such list seems to exist and most papers and books only mention the use in the Second World War in passing, it can be strongly assumed that most of the films show would have been Soviet productions of propagandist value, from Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky to Alexander Dovzhenko and Yuliya Solntseva Ukraine in Flames.

So, while there still is a lot to be researched, Red Army soldiers definitely saw movies during WWII although in a different setting and less frequently than soldiers in other armies.

Sources:

• Thomas Tode: Agit-trains, Agit-steamers, Cinema Trucks: Dziga Vertov and Travelling Cinema in the Early 1920s in the Soviet Union.

• Richard Taylor: A Medium for the Masses: Agitation in the Soviet Civil War.

• Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society: From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin.