 Following the order to stop production of the film from the Soviet government and Shumyatsky , Eisenstein contracted smallpox , followed afterwards by influenza , and the film was destined to remain unfinished . He worked further on the story with the Soviet author Isaac Babel , but no material was ever published or released from their collaboration , and the production of Bezhin Meadow came to an end . The unfinished and unreleased film reels were destroyed during a World War II bombing raid in 1941 . In a later published response to Shumyatsky titled " The Mistakes of Bezhin Meadow " , Eisenstein pledged he would " rid myself of the last anarchistic traits of individualism in my outlook and creative method " . Eisenstein finally wrote , " What caused catastrophe to overtake the picture I had worked on for two years ? What was the mistaken viewpoint which , despite honesty of feelings and devotion to work , brought the production to a perversion of reality , making it politically insubstantial and consequently inartistic ? " 
