Movie: Battleship Potemkin — Bronenosets Po’tyomkin (1925)

Battleship Potemkin is a propaganda movie that depicts the sailor revolt in 1905 during the times of the Russian Empire, and it was made in 1925 under the Soviet Union administration to show the first step of the glorious Communist Revolution. I was dumbfounded by the excessive propaganda, but even more dumbfounded by the genius of the director Sergei Eisenstein for making such an original movie in 1925.

The Russian Empire wanted an ice-free harbor, and so they consistently implemented policies to expand south; due to their victory in the Russo-Turkish War in 1878, they acquired power over the Balkan Peninsula. Chancellor Bismarck of the German Empire, who was wary of Russian expansion, organized a meeting that assembled representatives of the Great Powers in Berlin, and succeeded in restraining Russia’s power. With this, Russia abandoned their policy to go south of the Balkan Peninsula, and turned their eyes towards invading into the Far East, which resulted in the Russo-Japanese War that occurred in 1904. Great Britain, with investments in Asia, feared the advancement of Russia into Asia, and gave financial and military support to Japan based on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but France, who had bitter thoughts towards Germany and Britain, formed the Franco-Russian Alliance in opposition. Japan requested that United States President Theodore Roosevelt—who was friendly with Japan in those days—do peace negotiations, but Russia decided to deploy their Baltic Fleet—a fleet based in the Baltic Sea that Russia claimed to be unrivaled in those days—and they refused Roosevelt’s peace negotiations.

The Baltic Fleet went around the coast of the African continent for seven months to get to Japan. They anticipated the refusal of food and fuel provisions from British and German colonies in Africa, but the support from French territories that they were relying on did not go as well as expected, and they had to continue on a very difficult voyage. The truth was that Britain and France established their Entente Cordiale (“cordial agreement”) on April 8, 1904, immediately after the Russo-Japanese War broke out. On May 27, 1905, the Baltic Fleet met and engaged in battle with the Combined Fleet of the Japanese navy in the Sea of Japan, and lost most of their ships in a naval battle; they received the devastating blow of having their Commander-in-Chief taken prisoner, and the naval battle ended with a complete landslide victory for the Japanese fleet. Because around the same time on June 14, a sailors’ mutiny erupted on the battleship Potemkin stationed on the Black Sea, it became necessary for Russia to quickly terminate the Russo-Japanese War.

Before the Russo-Turkish War, Russia supported Greece’s independence from the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence that broke out in 1821; Russia then went to war without any allies against Turkey and gained victory. Due to the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, the coastal zones of the Black Sea were surrendered from Turkey, and Russian ships were able to pass through the Bosphorus/Dardanelles strait freely. Britain and France, in fear of Russia’s expansion south, called the Convention of London in 1840, and due to the London Straits Convention in 1841, the allowance of Russian ships through the Bosphorus/Dardanelles strait was repealed. In other words, Russian warships were internationally banned from entering the Mediterranean Sea through the strait. Therefore, the Russian fleet in the Black Sea wasn’t able to dispatch troops during the Russo-Japanese War. Potemkin was part of the Black Sea Fleet.

In this movie, an armed uprising by the sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin occurs; the rebelling sailors execute an officer and declare a revolution, turning towards the Ukrainian harbor city Odessa. The massacre of Odessa citizens by Russian government troops occurs because the people of Odessa welcomed Potemkin; the Russian fleet is dispatched in order to suppress Potemkin. The movie paints the rebellion as the glorious beginning of the Revolution by depicting the sailors of the government fleet calling the Potemkin sailors brothers with a feeling of solidarity. However, how much of reality is reflected in this movie?

First, the highly praised and famous scene in movie history of the massacre on the stairs in Odessa seems to not be a historical fact. The stairs with a strange design seen in the movie do exist in Odessa, though. If you stand at the top of the stairs and look down towards the bottom, you can only see the landings and not the stairs. However, if you stand at the bottom of the stairs and look up, you only see stairs, and don’t see the landings. When looking up at the stairs from the sea, the stairs look longer than they actually are; when looking down the stairs while on land, the stairs appear to be shorter than they actually are. Since the massacre depicted on these stairs in Odessa became a classic scene, it feels as if it is a historical fact. In truth, Odessa’s city government was against the activities of Potemkin, and did not allow the anchorage of Potemkin.

It is true that the fleet sent to suppress Potemkin did not fire at the Potemkin. Because many sailors in the suppressing fleet sympathized with the revolt of the Potemkin, Vice Admiral Krieger, who was appointed as the acting commander, felt that if he gave the order to fire at the Potemkin, not only was his life was in danger, but his whole fleet might join Potemkin’s rebellion; thus, he passed the Potemkin without doing anything. The sailors of the suppression fleet, despite being forbidden to by their superior officers, went up to the deck to cheer and greet the sailors on the Potemkin when they approached. Furthermore, the sailors of another armored warship Georgii Pobedonosets arrested their own superior officers and joined the Potemkin uprising. On another battleship, Sinop, a faction in favor of joining Potemkin argued with a faction against it; the latter won, and they did not join Potemkin.

What happened to the sailors of the Potemkin mutiny afterwards?

On the armored warship Georgii Pobedonosets that had joined Potemkin, the sailors immediately split into factions. The sailors who regretted thoughtlessly aligning with the mutiny released the captain and officers, and the next day, handed over 68 of the mutiny leaders. The Potemkin, refused anchorage by Odessa, arrived at Constanta, Romania, but the Romanian government refused to provide the necessary supplies to the Potemkin. The Potemkin sailors surrendered to Romania, and the Romanian government returned the battleship Potemkin to the Russian government. Most sailors chose to take refuge in Romania as political offenders, and remained in Romania until a communist administration was established in Russia in 1917 by means of the Russian Revolution. Also, some sailors planned to escape abroad from Romania. Some escaped to South America, such as to Argentina, while others crossed to Western Europe via Turkey.

In the movie scene of the Odessa citizens’ antigovernment demonstration, the citizens shout, “Beat the executioner, tyranny, and Jews!!”; there is even a scene of a Jew—who was trying to calm down demonstrators by saying, “Mothers and brothers! Let there not be differences or hostility among us!”—being mobbed. The Jew is depicted looking rich and having a bad character. Considering that Sergei Eisenstein, who made this movie, was Jewish, I was really surprised, but this may have been the feelings of Russians towards Jews in those days.

Due to the huge success of Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein was invited to Hollywood, and lived in America starting from 1930; he became close friends with Walt Disney and Charlie Chaplin, but his ideas were not used by moviemakers in Hollywood, and in the end, he returned to the Soviet Union without any visible achievement. What on earth did he do in America, I wonder.

When Sergei Eisenstein returned to his home country, Stalin’s Great Purge had started, and it was the time when the Purge extended to artists. Sergei Eisenstein made movies rich in artistic taste, which did not completely comply with socialist realism, and he also stayed in America for a long time and had many American friends; because of this, he was in a situation where he could be suspected of the crime of being a spy. However, he seems to have gotten through the Purge safely, but somehow his boss Boris Shumyatsky was purged and executed. A big part of this story still remains unclear.

After World War II, because they were close friends of Sergei Eisenstein, Walt Disney and Charlie Chaplin were suspected during the “Red Scare,” which was carried out with the authority of Senator McCarthy. Walt Disney was granted innocence, but Charlie Chaplin was eventually deported.

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