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Coleridge said that seeing the fiery Edmund Kean act was "like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning". Watching Sergei Eisenstein's classic silent film October is like watching the Russian revolution the same way. It's surreally lit up by stark images that sear your retina; gone the next second, to be replaced by others just as mysterious and disorientating. October is not a historical document, more a remembered dream. I sometimes wish we could see it without music, with just a deafening thunderbolt on each of its 3,200 cuts. A violent electrical storm of strangeness.

The film was commissioned in Stalin's Soviet Russia for the 10th anniversary of the 1917 October revolution, as a suitably fervent propagandist celebration. Eisenstein was the obvious candidate to direct, having won an international reputation for his brilliant Battleship Potemkin. Like Orson Welles, he had first made his mark in experimental theatre (And, like Welles, he later got bogged down in a big Latin American location shoot that resulted in a lost film - for Welles: It's All True, for Eisenstein: ¡Que viva México!).

October has fierce, declamatory intertitles with exclamation points, unforgettably intense closeups on faces, staggering crowd scenes with swarming masses, savage and ambiguous satiric digressions and epic set pieces for which Eisenstein was pretty much given licence to do what he liked in Leningrad (as it then was). He was recreating or reimagining historical events so soon afterwards, and with so many of the original participants, that the film is almost a docu-hallucination of what happened.

The action follows the historical record, in its way. The February revolution sees the pulling down of the statue of Alexander III; there is tension and frustration between the workers, peasants and soldiers. April sees the incendiary arrival of Lenin from exile, demanding an end to the Provisional government. The July Days are shown, with their riots, the Bolsheviks' unwillingness to attack and the spectacular urban disorder. General Kornilov launches a Tsarist counter-revolutionary assault, which is foiled after a reverse-time vision of the Tsar statue being de-toppled; the Provisional government's leader Kerensky is shown strutting pompously around, affecting his Napoleonic mannerisms; and finally there is the storming of the Winter Palace itself.

The film pioneered a number of things, quite apart from the montage - the audacious juxtaposition of images - for which Eisenstein became famous. Stalin himself interfered at an early stage, viewing an early rough assembly of material and demanding that scenes with Trotsky and even Lenin were removed. And so he became cinema's first overbearing producer, in a nauseous parallel with his censorship, tyranny and mass murder. Eisenstein was never terrorised by Stalin in the way other artists were, and was arguably as complicit as any apparatchik, but he was certainly later compelled to abandon his experimentalism for Stalin's favoured "socialist realism". He was further forced to make humiliating public apologies when Stalin declared he had got it wrong and he underwent constant fear.

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Eisenstein was forced to make humiliating public apologies for what Stalin said he got wrong... a still from October. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

October is of course very different from classic Hollywood film-making, as in, say, David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (based on the Boris Pasternak novel), in which a conventional love story anchors the political events. Eisenstein doesn't offer any characters for us to relate to. Lenin and Kerensky hardly count. My personal theory, moreover, is that the puffed-up, boastful figure of Kerensky is not only to be compared to Napoleon - apart from the lack of a moustache, he could be Marshal Stalin himself in his uniform and his stiff bearing.

The storming of the Winter Palace is a concept Eisenstein almost invented. It became the eternal trope for the revenge of the dispossessed: a simple, dual image. Power and wealth inside the luxurious palace; downtrodden poor outside. In reality, it was a chaotic and weirdly anticlimactic affair involving far fewer people. Eisenstein reimagined it for posterity as a sweeping battle scene, like the storming of the Bastille. He also added irresistible images, such as the Bolshevik jeering incredulously at the padded lavatory seat in the Empress's bedroom.

Perhaps more astonishing is an earlier sequence, in which the government orders the raising of a drawbridge to prevent the Bolshevik masses from entering the city; in the melee, a dead white horse, attached to a carriage, is caught at the point where the bridge separates. It dangles high above the river: poignant, awe-inspiring and in some mysterious way sacrificial. It has a stranger-than-fiction reality. What a horribly undignified end for this noble beast. What on earth can it symbolise? In its pure unreadability it has a poetic power in excess of Eisenstein's much-discussed montage pairing of the conceited Kerensky with shots of an imaginary mechanical peacock.

Above all else, October is about violence. The whole movie is shot through with an atmosphere of delirium. For all that it is a loyal and ideological tribute to the revolution, it also looks like a bacchanal of violent insurrection, or a panoramic portrait shattered into thousands of shard-like images. This is partly due to the unfinished first world war: Russia was in conflict within and without, and its own civil war - that great unmentioned subject that comes between the events of this film and the circumstances of its release - hovers over it. October is an intuition of what Pushkin called the merciless senselessness of the Pugachevshchina, the 18th-century peasant revolt from which the ruling classes learned secretly to fear and hate the lower orders. Lenin himself said the "proletarian state" is a "system of organised violence". Eisenstein's film could be said in its own way to have systematised it.

Yet there is always something more unquantifiable going on. When the all-female 1st Petrograd Women's Battalion of Death is summoned to defend the Winter Palace, Eisenstein creates a very curious byway in which a soldier is shown in a sort of reverie triggered by a Rodin statue. That is partly to mock women's alleged incapacity for martial service, but it is also just to knock things for a visual loop. The same is true, I think, for the grand ladies with their parasols attacking the worker during the July Days. Of course that is to satirise the bourgeoisie, yet Eisenstein appears in that instant on the women's side, obscurely excited by the exotic flare-up of aggression.

October is a film which attaches itself to Russian history's dark combustion, almost as if political reality was metaphorically subordinate to Eisenstein's own radical formal upheaval as an artist. The events gave him the perfect pretext for explosive unruliness on a grand scale. His guiding spirit was not Lenin, but Bakunin. The film is pure anarchy.

Sergei Eisenstein's October will be screened with a live orchestral score at the Barbican, London, on 26 October.

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Hallucinating history: when Stalin and Eisenstein reinvented a revolution

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Coleridge said that seeing the fiery Edmund Kean act was "like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning". Watching Sergei Eisenstein's classic silent film October is like watching the Russian revolution the same way. It's surreally lit up by stark images that sear your retina; gone the next second, to be replaced by others just as mysterious and disorientating.

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https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/leaders-throughout-the-history-of-the-soviet-union.html

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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution

[a.k.a. The April Theses]

Published: April 7, 1917 in Pravda No. 26. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the newspaper text.
Source: Lenin'sCollected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 24, pp. 19-26.
Translated: Isaacs Bernard
Transcription: Zodiac
HTML Markup: B. Baggins
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2005), marx.org (1997), marxists.org (1999). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source.

This article contains Lenin's famous April Theses read by him at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, on April 4, 1917.

[Introduction]

I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.

The only thing I could do to make things easier for myself-and for honest opponents-was to prepare the theses in writing. I read them out, and gave the text to Comrade Tsereteli. I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

I publish these personal theses of mine with only the briefest explanatory notes, which were developed in far greater detail in the report.

THESES

1) In our attitude towards the war, which under the new [provisional] government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia's part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to "revolutionary defencism" is permissible.

The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.

The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.

Fraternisation.

2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution-which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie-to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.

This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.

This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.

3) No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding "demand" that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.

4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee ( Chkheidze, Tsereteli, etc.), Steklov, etc., etc., who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.

As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers' Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.

5) Not a parliamentary republic-to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers' Deputies would be a retrograde step-but a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.

Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.

The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.

6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies.

Confiscation of all landed estates.

Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies and for the public account.

7) The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies.

8) It is not our immediate task to "introduce" socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies.

9) Party tasks:

(a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;

(b) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly:

(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war,

(2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a "commune state";

(3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme;

(c) Change of the Party's name.

10. A new International.

We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the "Centre".

In order that the reader may understand why I had especially to emphasise as a rare exception the "case" of honest opponents, I invite him to compare the above theses with the following objection by Mr. Goldenberg: Lenin, he said, "has planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy" (quoted in No. 5 of Mr. Plekhanov 's ).

Isn't it a gem?

I write, announce and elaborately explain: "In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism ... in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them...."

Yet the bourgeois gentlemen who call themselves Social-Democrats, who do not belong either to the broad sections or to the mass believers in defencism, with serene brow present my views thus: "The banner[!] of civil war" (of which there is not a word in the theses and not a word in my speech!) has been planted(!) "in the midst [!!] of revolutionary democracy...".

What does this mean? In what way does this differ from riot-inciting agitation, from Russkaya Volya?

I write, announce and elaborately explain: "The Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and therefore our task is to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses."

Yet opponents of a certain brand present my views as a call to "civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy"!

I attacked the Provisional Government for not having appointed an early date or any date at all, for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and for confining itself to promises. I argued that without the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies the convocation of the Constituent Assembly is not guaranteed and its success is impossible.

And the view is attributed to me that I am opposed to the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly!

I would call this "raving", had not decades of political struggle taught me to regard honesty in opponents as a rare exception.

Mr. Plekhanov in his paper called my speech "raving". Very good, Mr. Plekhanov! But look how awkward, uncouth and slow-witted you are in your polemics. If I delivered a raving speech for two hours, how is it that an audience of hundreds tolerated this "raving"? Further, why does your paper devote a whole column to an account of the "raving"? Inconsistent, highly inconsistent!

It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain, to recall [See: what Marx and Engels said in 1871, 1872 and 1875 about the experience of the Paris Commune and about the kind of state the proletariat needs. The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme]

Ex-Marxist Mr. Plekhanov evidently does not care to recall Marxism.

I quoted the words of Rosa Luxemburg, who on August 4, 1914, calledGerman Social-Democracy a "stinking corpse". And the Plekhanovs, Goldenbergs and Co. feel "offended". On whose behalf? On behalf of the German chauvinists, because they were called chauvinists!

They have got themselves in a mess, these poor Russian social-chauvinists-socialists in word and chauvinists in deed.

Notes

i.e. the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people.- Lenin

i.e., a state of which the Paris Commune was the prototype.- Lenin

Instead of "Social-Democracy", whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the "defencists" and the vacillating "Kautskyites"), we must call ourselves the Communist Party.- Lenin

The " Centre" in the international Social-Democratic movement is the trend which vacillates between the chauvinists (="defencists") and internationalists, i.e., Kautsky and Co. in Germany, Longuet and Co. in France, Chkheidze and Co. in Russia, Turati and Co. in Italy, MacDonald and Co. in Britain, etc.- Lenin

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The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (a.k.a. the April Theses)

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a.k.a. The April Theses] Published: April 7, 1917 in Pravda No. 26. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the newspaper text. Source: Lenin'sCollected Works , Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 24, pp. 19-26. Translated: Isaacs Bernard Transcription: Zodiac HTML Markup: B. Baggins Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2005), marx.org (1997), marxists.org (1999).

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Who does that remind me of... hmm...

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Maltetsar

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Whose statue is this and what is the significance of it being torn down?

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Whose statue is this and what is the significance of it being torn down?

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Nice things, are hidden well to the left

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Nice things, are hidden well to the left

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Sergei Eisenstein: October - Ten Days That Shook the World (1928)