Eureka! … Since 1981

Eureka! Classics | Exposing some of the myths of the Russian Revolution

A fascinating collection of footage from the years 1913-17, focussing on the Russian Revolution. With an introduction by Russian historian and cultural expert, it exposed a number of myths about the revolution and in particular, the Bolsheviks.

In his famous work State and Revolution, Lenin wrote: ”Democracy is not identical with majority rule. Democracy is a State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority – that is, an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against the other, by one part of a population against another.”

‘The Russian Revolution’ is the phrase relating to a sequence of events which happened in Russia from 1905 to 1917. The First Russian Revolution of 1905, followed the Russo-Japanese war. In February 1917, during World War I, the Second Russian Revolution developed into the October Revolution led by the Bolsheviks, who established the so called ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.

Later the Bolsheviks manufactured and manipulated propaganda as a means to convince Russia’s population of:

a) the importance of their leading role in all revolutionary events, (which was not true in relation to the First and Second Russian revolutions);

b) the fact that a genuine proletarian revolution (in the Marxist sense) had occurred in October 1917, (which really was not possible in the light of classical Marxist theory);

c) the idea that only under Bolshevik rule, Russia possessed the capacity to move from agricultural backwardness, towards a bright industrial future, (from the darkness of the Romanov monarchy to the light of the Soviet power). This again was untrue, if the strong industrial development of Russia after the great reforms of 1861, is taken into account. Subsequently a myth was created, presenting all the revolutionary events from the Bolshevik point of view.

This myth formed the basis of the documentary The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty and the same myth can be easily recognized in Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpieces Strike, The Battleship Potemkin, and October 1917.

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Original documentary footage with full length commentary
Fully restored – digitally remastered