Ten Days That Shook the World – 100th Anniversary of the October Revolution

November marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution. The ten days in 1917 that shook the world (title of John Reed’s account of the revolution) inspired the November revolution of 1918 in Germany and changed the course of world history.

The official Soviet historiography elevated and romanticized the coup d’état which went down in history under the name October Revolution, but actually took place in November. The images of the charge at the Winter Palace in Sankt Petersburg that we believe to be authentic are mostly from early Soviet films like Eisenstein’s October. In addition to Eisenstein’s historic epos we show Kurt Maetzig’s movie The sailor’s Song  (GDR 1958), which tells of the influence of the Russian Revolution towards the end of World War I. Kathrin Rothes animated documentary The Real October (2017) retells the Russian Revolution through the eyes of artists like Kazimir Malevitch, Vladimir Mayakovski and Zinaida Gippius.

In 2018 we will continue our programs that deal with revolutions and revolutionaries, as we commemorate the 200th birthday of a philosopher whose writings greatly contributed to the revolutions of the 20th century: Karl Marx.