Produced in 1927 by a
group of Soviet filmmakers led by Sergei Eisenstein for the tenth anniversary
of the October Revolution this film recreates the events of October 1917 with
the greatest possible realism. Many participants of the revolution: Red Guards,
soldiers and sailors appear in the film, among them is Nikola Podvolsky one of
the leaders of the armed uprising. When the film was made Leningrad and its
streets, the buildings, the Winter Palace, the Corridors of the Smolny were the
same as in that fateful year. Thus October 1917 renders a stirring
eyewitness account of the early days of the revolution.
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| The February Revolution. |
A masterpiece created by
one of the world’s greatest film directors, it is in fact a welcome gift to
film viewers. The original movie premiered in the era of the silent screen.
Eisenstein’s associate Grigory Alexandrov made the sound version. The music is by Dmitri Shostakovich and the
film was dedicated to the Petrograd Proletariat heroes of the October
Revolution. The October Revolution Jubilee Committee, Chairman Nikolai
Podvolsky, commissioned it. The screenplay was by Eisenstein and
Alexandrov.
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| Lenin addresses the crowd.... |
“We have the right to be proud that to us fell the
good fortune of beginning the building of the Soviet State and by doing so
opening a new chapter in the history of the world”
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| ....to great effect. |
This movie is an example
how working people can rise up and assert themselves forming a new Socialist
State, destroying the authoritarian fascists and there like. Where all people
are free, no matter what colour or religion, from racialist and bigoted
demagogues. The means of production is put well and truly back in the hands of
the proletariat who will no longer have be wage slaves to make the rich richer
but able to provide themselves and their families with a good standard of
living, a warm place to live and the feeling of security.
The 1917 Russian
Revolution had two distinct phases. The revolution in February was the product
of discontent with the conduct of war and the overthrew of the Russian Tsardom.
Resulting liberalism enabled preparation for the second revolution in
"October", which exploited war weariness in the interests of the
international revolutionary doctrines of Marxism. The Bolshevik party that
consisted of Lenin and other leaders had been consistently against war, and
we're abroad formulating their own revolution at the time of the February
revolt.
Lenin immediately took the
view that the Soviets support of the bourgeois revolution had been overtaken by
events, and that the time was ripe for a proletarian revolution in Russia, as a
signal for a worldwide socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks, declaring members
of the central executive committee traitors to the revolution, openly worked
for their overthrow and of the bourgeois government. At the time of the October
revolution, real authority was held by the Soviets in the capitals and
provisional towns, who openly defied the government, while various
nationalities began to secede from the state, forming their own national armies
to defend their newly created frontiers and national flags.
The whole country was in a
state of feverish unrest, which soon developed into riots and anarchy. Most
destructive were the peasants who began expropriating the land, driving off
cattle, burning farms, demolishing forests and agricultural equipment, and
capturing, torturing and murdering landowners. On October 20th, a body known as
the "pre-parliament" was constituted in Petrograd, following which
leaders of the Soviet constituted a military revolutionary committee and
declared it the highest military authority in the capital and province of
Petrogad.
The Bolshevik Revolution
was inseparably connected with the convocation of the second Congress of
Soviets. Trotsky demanded that the military revolutionary committee
countersigned all general staff orders. This was rejected, whereby a resolution
was passed by delegates representing all troops, refusing to obey commands of
the general staff and recognizing the central executive committee as the sole
organ of power. An ultimatum was issued to the committee to withdraw this
resolution. This ultimatum was ignored, thereby forcing counter active measures
such as raising the bridges to cut off any communications between the left and
right banks of the Neva. Only when government ministers established at the
Winter Palace learned that the guns of the cruiser "Aurora" and the
Peter and Paul fortress were trained on them, did they decide to surrender to
the revolutionaries. In the support of the day, Trotsky declared: we hoped to
establish a compromise without bloodshed. But now blood has been shed, there is
only one way left, a ruthless fight. With these words Trotsky proclaimed the
approaching civil war, and as the Petrogad revolution swept Russia, the new Bolshevik
regime was for now, immune from military menace.
