Battleship Potemkin
A film by Sergei Eisenstein
Reviewed by Clare Doyle
Revolution is not one act, with the class opponents lined up and facing each other for one mighty battle and one side winning outright. It is a drama with several episodes and scenes, which eventually reach a climax in either defeat or the overthrow of one class by another.
There are even ‘dress rehearsals’ in which all the actors are involved but have not yet perfected the roles they must play in order to succeed. Lenin and Trotsky – leaders of the victorious socialist revolution in Russia in October 1917 – characterised the 1905 revolution as a “dress rehearsal” for that great trial of strength just 12 years later. Many lessons were drawn, but all the elements necessary to ensure a successful revolution against capitalism and landlordism had not yet matured.
But what a dress rehearsal! This year we are celebrating its 120th anniversary. At the time of the ‘Now Filming’ exhibition at Four Corners in London, Socialist Party members and guests met up to discuss the marvellous revolutionary film, Battle Ship Potemkin – made by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925. This traces the development of a mutiny in the Black Sea Fleet in 1905 and acts as the perfect accompaniment to Trotsky’s book, 1905, about that historic year of struggle
Behind the dramatic events of 1905 were the ignominious defeats in the war with Japan and the increasingly despotic rule at home of Tsar Nicolas ll. On 9th January, 1905, it was he who ordered his soldiers to mow down a procession of unarmed workers and their families, led by a Priest – Father Gapon. They were petitioning their ‘Little Father, the Tsar’ for an eight-hour working day, the right to strike and the establishment of a Constituent Assembly. At least two hundred were killed that day and more than 800 were severely injured as people fled from the flailing swords of the hated Cossack soldiers – in the Palace Square itself, on the Nevsky Prospect leading up to it and at the Troitsky Bridge over the Neva.
After the Bolsheviks took power twelve years later, and rid the vast Russian empire of Tsarism and capitalism, ‘Bloody Sunday’ was commemorated every year across the length and breadth of the USSR. In the ‘Northern Capital’, St Petersburg, renamed Leningrad in 1924, numerous contingents of workers would file into Palace Square from factories and workplaces across the city, with banners and red flags flying.
When capitalist restoration engulfed the USSR in the 1990s, 9th January was no longer marked as a special day. Just a small band of ‘communist’ and ‘socialist’ supporters would gather in Winter Palace Square to remember Bloody Sunday. Eventually only a few aging members of the once-mighty ‘Communist’ Party would be there – Stalinists of the worst Trotsky-hating variety.
However, for new generations of would-be class fighters, lessons from long-past struggles are invaluable. Not least are the incidents in history where, even though the conditions for a successful revolution are not all present, reforms are granted in an attempt by the rulers to prevent further attempts at revolution. The October Manifesto issued by Tsar Nicolas in 1905 was drawn up in response to that year’s revolution, establishing a representative Duma to be elected by universal suffrage and outlined certain improvements to individual rights and freedoms, even though it was eventually crushed and its leaders imprisoned or forced into exile.
In the course of the revolutionary year of 1905, one of the most dramatic developments was that of mutinies within the ranks of the military forces, including at the island-fortress of Kronstadt. More than once, in the Black Sea and off the coast of Japan, sailors in the Russian Fleet mutinied – against constant bullying by officers, against overcrowded conditions in the living and sleeping quarters and against meagre food rations that were not fit for animals, let alone humans, to eat.
Eisenstein’s famous black and white film immortalises one of the most important revolts – the mutiny on board the Battleship Potemkin in June of 1905. Using music by the German composer Edmund Meisl, as well as Dmitri Shostakovich and Nikolai Kryukov, it has unforgettable, now ‘classic’ scenes: maggot-ridden meat being served up for sailors; Tsarist forces mowing down vast crowds who have turned out to greet the mutineers: and the pram that rolls slowly down the famous Odessa Steps after the baby’s mother has been shot dead.
Yet there is so much more that makes the film worth watching for the full hour and seven minutes. Not least is the scene of the fugitive battleship being honoured by the rest of the Russian fleet making way for its departure from Odessa. The leaders of the mutiny were, in fact, viciously punished but remained forever heroes in the hearts of the ‘soviet’ public!
Like Eisenstein’s other most famous film, October, made in 1927, about the successful revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917, Battleship Potemkin was extremely popular in the USSR. Stalin, even while wielding the bloody axe of state repression against millions of oppositionists, had to tolerate it. The only measure he could take at first was to replace words in the foreword written by Leon Trotsky with a quote from Lenin. It was not until after the second world war that he finally managed to impose a ban on it, only lifted after his death in 1953.
Elsewhere in established capitalist countries, censorship boards felt this movie would spread communism and banned it. France did so after a brief run in 1925 and only lifted the ban in 1953. The UK banned the film until 1954. Eventually, at the Brussels World Fair in 1958, Battleship Potemkin was named ‘The greatest film of all time’.
A recent exhibition in East London of film and photos made by and for workers between the two world wars showed that there was a constant cat-and-mouse struggle with the authorities over producing them and showing them. In a specific section called ‘Battle over Censorship’ it explained how rules were flouted by showing work in private halls or in the back of specially adapted ‘kinobuses’.
Part of the exhibition dealt with the scandal of the British Board of Film Classification banning the showing of Battleship Potemkin in 1926 “fearing it would lead to public unrest”. This was the year of the powerful nine-day General Strike in this country. Even eight years later, in 1934, when the film was being shown at the Miners’ Hall in Durham to 400 people, police officers turned up and arrested Ivan Seruya the projectionist!
In a book called ‘1001 Movies you must see before you die’, Jean-Michel Frodon refers to the film Battleship Potemkin as being, “A point of conflict between the East and the West, the left and the right”. By no means a socialist himself, Frodon nevertheless argues that this great film should be seen in its entirety and not just a cut down version with only the most famous scenes. Luckily, these days, a full version is available on YouTube.
In his book, 1905, in the chapter entitled ‘The Red Fleet’, Trotsky writes: “The country did not know a moment of quiet. Workers’ strikes, incessant meetings, street processions, wrecking’s of country estates, strikes of policemen and janitors, and finally unrest and mutiny among the soldiers and sailors”. This sums up what was indeed a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the revolutionary year of 1917 and worthy of study by all those who wish to learn vital lessons for the victory of socialism in the near future.
Further reading on 1905 can be found in Socialism Today No.283, December-January 2024/25, with an article by Christine Thomas, Lessons Of The First Russian Revolution, and a comprehensive chronology by Martin Powell-Davies.