Eisenstein's Masterpiece

Potemkin Premier: 21 December 1925

The Battleship Potyomkin premiered at the Bolshoi Theater on December 21, 1925, to great fanfare. Still in his twenties, its director, Sergei Eisenstein, was already famous.

The film’s release was timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the Revolution of 1905, and the initial plan was for it to include a number of famous events from those tumultuous times. However, due to various technical difficulties and time constraints, the scope of the film had to be narrowed, and it wound up focusing on the uprising by sailors of the Black Sea Fleet. The filmmaker used his genius to create the impression that this rebellion was, perhaps, the revolution’s pivotal moment.

The Revolution of 1905 was a fascinating episode in Russian history, one that has been little understood. In fact, for a long time its history has been distorted.

In Soviet times, schoolchildren were taught that the 1905 revolution was crushed; its only significance was as a harbinger of 1917 and ultimate Bolshevik victory.

Crushed? Hardly. The Revolution of 1905 gave Russian society an unprecedented forward impetus. It showed that people could organize and fight for their rights. Most important of all, it gave Russia something it had long been waiting for: a legislative assembly (the Duma) and political freedoms, both promised in the Russian emperor’s Manifesto of October 17.

Of course, in the years that followed, the government tried to take back its promises. It disbanded the Duma and placed limits on the freedoms it had granted, but it could not entirely rein in what it had unleashed. Autocratic Russia had started down a long, hard path, but at least it was heading in the right direction, toward democratic change. The Bolsheviks, of course, saw the Revolution of 1905 quite differently.

December 21 was chosen for the premiere because (after adjusting for the transition from Old to New Style dates) this was the anniversary of the Moscow rebellion of 1905. It was also the birthday of Joseph Stalin, who by 1925 had a firm grip on power – another possible factor in the timing.

The Moscow rebellion and the Battleship Potyomkin mutiny were dramatic events, but they were certainly not the most important developments of 1905, as Bolshevik propaganda would have us think. The October Manifesto featured little in this propaganda. After all, who needs a Duma or the petty freedoms the tsar granted?

Thanks to Eisenstein, a mutiny by sailors driven to desperation by bad food (and, perhaps, provoked by vodka consumed on an empty stomach) was transformed into a great historical turning point precipitated by the undeniable force of the masses. Eisenstein’s images are now a part of world culture – who can forget the famous Odessa stairs or the baby carriage flying down them? A new life was beginning, new forces were arising, and now – twenty years later – the fruits of the uprising were here for all to see.

This was the message conveyed to viewers sitting in the Bolshoi Theater that December night in 1925.

The fact that Eisenstein’s depiction bore little resemblance to what actually happened in Odessa, where the battleship docked after the mutiny, or that the port was essentially destroyed by a rampaging mob, or that only one other ship joined the mutineers – none of these inconvenient details were included in the film.

Similarly, the ten-day Moscow Uprising, perceived by most people in 1905 as the incomprehensible actions of radicals, was completely beside the point as the country prepared for elections to the First State Duma. Now, this upheaval was being portrayed as a “culmination,” a climactic moment in the march toward revolution.

For many years Soviet schoolchildren were taught the famous exchange between Lenin and the revolutionary and Marxist theorist Georgy Plekhanov, where the latter says of 1905, “There was no need to take up arms.” To which Lenin replied: “There was a need, but with greater decisiveness and definitiveness.”

Images from the film

So that’s how events were supposed to unfold in 1905. The entire country should have followed the example of the Potyomkin mutineers and Moscow Bolsheviks and taken up arms to overthrow the hateful regime, without falling for promises of freedoms and parliaments.

Finally, things were done “right” in 1917. Surely the key players in the October Revolution were gratified in December 1925 to see the “correct” version of the Revolution of 1905.

Little did they know it, but many members of the premiere’s audience did not have long to live. In a dozen or so years, the Great Terror would take the lives of thousands upon thousands, including those who truly believed that Russians should have taken up arms in 1905.

Over the years, Battleship Potyomkin underwent many changes. Scenes were cut and later restored, the musical score was changed, and the silent film was given a soundtrack. One of the most politically symbolic changes was the removal of a prologue by Trotsky, which, under Stalin, was cut and replaced with Lenin’s words.

The great film entered the realm of myth and ceased to belong to its creator. Official propaganda took the Battleship Potyomkin myth firmly in hand and began to reshape it according to its needs. Yet as filmmaking, Battleship Potyomkin was still a work of genius.

Eisenstein remained faithful to the regime and continued to make films that, in his mind at least, corresponded to the ideas of the time. He did not always succeed. Bezhin Meadow – a film about collectivization and the “heroic deed” performed by Pavlik Morozov, who informed on his own father – was banned and destroyed. Ivan the Terrible, which extolled a brutal tyrant dear to Stalin’s heart, was at first officially praised but later banned after the release of Part II.

The great director was a great mythmaker, but he did not always manage to march in lockstep with official thinking. Battleship Potyomkin continues to float proudly across screens, flying its red flag (which Eisenstein personally hand-colored on the black and white film for the showing at the Bolshoi Theater).

A great new brand of cinema ushered in a terrible new era in history.