Misplaced Pages

#333666

139-484: In the early 1920s, cinema emerged as a central medium of artistic expression in the Soviet Union. The relatively new form was celebrated as the tool of a new social order by revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Trotsky . However, by the mid-1920s, as Richard Taylor writes, "The conventional structures of the cinema industry in its three major aspects - production, distribution, and exhibition - had been shattered by

278-622: A Corsier conference they agreed to launch the paper from Munich , where Lenin relocated in September. Containing contributions from prominent European Marxists, Iskra was smuggled into Russia, becoming the country's most successful underground publication since 1850s. He first adopted the pseudonym Lenin in December 1901, possibly based on the Siberian River Lena ; he often used the fuller pseudonym of N. Lenin, and while

417-436: A Lutheran by upbringing, was largely indifferent to Christianity , a view that influenced her children. Ilya Ulyanov was from a family of former serfs ; Ilya's father's ethnicity remains unclear, with suggestions that he was of Russian , Chuvash , Mordvin , or Kalmyk ancestry. Despite a lower-class background, he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan University before teaching at

556-478: A Marxist ideology, Vertov strove to create a futuristic city that would serve as a commentary on existing ideals in the Soviet world. This artificial city's purpose was to awaken the Soviet citizen through truth and to ultimately bring about understanding and action. The kino's aesthetic shone through in his portrayal of electrification, industrialization , and the achievements of workers through hard labor. This film

695-585: A one-party state under the Communist Party . Ideologically a Marxist , his developments to the ideology are called Leninism . Born into a middle-class family in Simbirsk , Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother 's 1887 execution. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Tsarist government , he devoted the following years to

834-528: A one-party state . Within the party, a Political Bureau (Politburo) and Organisation Bureau (Orgburo) were established to accompany the existing Central Committee ; decisions of these bodies had to be adopted by Sovnarkom and the Council of Labour and Defence . Lenin was the most significant figure in this governance structure, being Chairman of Sovnarkom and sitting on the Council of Labour and Defence,

973-949: A "bourgeoisie-democratic revolution" of the middle classes had to take place before a "socialist revolution" of the proletariat, Lenin believed that in Russia the proletariat could overthrow the Tsarist regime without an intermediate revolution. In February 1917, the February Revolution broke out in Saint Petersburg, renamed Petrograd at the beginning of the First World War, as industrial workers went on strike over food shortages and deteriorating factory conditions. The unrest spread to other parts of Russia, and fearing that he would be violently overthrown, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. The State Duma took over control of

1112-584: A "socialist sense of justice". November also saw the military restructured with egalitarian measures, abolition of previous ranks, titles, and medals, and the establishment of soldiers' committees to elect commanders. Man with a Movie Camera Man with a Movie Camera ( Russian : Человек с киноаппаратом , romanized :  Chelovek s kinoapparatom ) is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film , directed by Dziga Vertov , filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman , and edited by Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova . Kaufman also appears as

1251-401: A Camera (1933) pays explicit homage to Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera . Man with a Movie Camera ' s usage of double exposure and seemingly "hidden" cameras made the movie come across as a surreal montage rather than a linear motion picture. Many of the scenes in the film contain people, which change size or appear underneath other objects ( double exposure ). Because of these aspects,

1390-683: A Marxist interpretation of societal development and counter the claims of the Narodniks. He wrote a paper on peasant economics; it was rejected by the liberal journal Russian Thought . In late 1893, Lenin moved to Saint Petersburg . There, he worked as a barrister's assistant and rose to a senior position in a Marxist revolutionary cell that called itself the Social-Democrats after the Marxist Social Democratic Party of Germany . Championing Marxism within

1529-649: A Movie Camera . Author Osip Brik espoused Kino-Eye as a model for all Soviet film production. Vertov also hoped that Kino-Eye would make cinema more intelligible to the common people, so that it could truly become a mass media form. There has been much debate over whether Kino-Eye was intended as an epistemological form, an emancipatory form, or even a scientific form. Hicks writes about Kino-Eye as an early expression of documentary , as Vertov's films were not staged and captured "real life" in order to create "tremendous rhetorical force." The delineation between "fiction" and "nonfiction" in film had not yet been clearly marked in

SECTION 10

#1732787126334

1668-518: A Russian language translation of Marx and Friedrich Engels 's 1848 political pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto . He began to read the works of the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov , agreeing with Plekhanov's argument that Russia was moving from feudalism to capitalism and so socialism would be implemented by the proletariat , or urban working class, rather than the peasantry. This Marxist perspective contrasted with

1807-674: A Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist who was the founder and first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. The founder and leader of the Bolsheviks , Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world's first socialist state . His government won the Russian Civil War and consolidated power in

1946-540: A bomb. Before the attack could take place, the conspirators were arrested and tried, and Alexander was executed by hanging in May 1887. Despite the emotional trauma of his father's and brother's deaths, Lenin continued studying, graduated from school at the top of his class with a gold medal for exceptional performance, and decided to study law at Kazan University. Upon entering Kazan University in August 1887, Lenin moved into

2085-704: A coalition government with other socialist parties. Though Sovnarkom refused a coalition with the Mensheviks or Socialist-Revolutionaries, it allowed the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries five cabinet posts in December 1917. This coalition lasted only until March 1918, when the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries left the government over disagreements about the Bolsheviks' approach to ending the First World War. At their 7th Congress in March 1918,

2224-510: A country controlled by the workers and power to the Soviets. Lenin and many other Bolsheviks expected proletariat revolution to sweep across Europe in days or months. The Provisional Government had planned for a Constituent Assembly to be elected in November 1917; despite Lenin's objections, Sovnarkom allowed the vote as scheduled. In the election , the Bolsheviks gained about a quarter of

2363-539: A country estate in Alakaevka village, Samara Oblast , in the hope that her son would turn his attention to agriculture. He had little interest in farm management, and his mother soon sold the land, keeping the house as a summer home. In September 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to the city of Samara , where Lenin joined Alexei Sklyarenko 's socialist discussion circle. There, Lenin fully embraced Marxism and produced

2502-666: A culturally Polish part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire , he used Jagiellonian University 's library to conduct research. He stayed in close contact with the RSDLP, which was operating in the Russian Empire, convincing the Duma's Bolshevik members to split from their parliamentary alliance with the Mensheviks. In January 1913, Stalin, whom Lenin referred to as the "wonderful Georgian", visited him, and they discussed

2641-492: A family life with Nadya's mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna, in Shushenskoye the couple translated English socialist literature into Russian. There, Lenin wrote A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats to criticise German Marxist revisionists like Eduard Bernstein who advocated a peaceful, electoral path to socialism. He also finished The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), his longest book to date, which criticised

2780-528: A job in Nizhny Novgorod , rising to become Director of Primary Schools in the Simbirsk district six years later. Five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the government's plans for modernisation. In January 1882, his dedication to education earned him the Order of Saint Vladimir , which bestowed on him

2919-548: A law degree before relocating to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and becoming a prominent Marxist activist. In 1897, Lenin was arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years. He then moved to Western Europe, where he became a key figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . In the party's 1903 schism, he led his Bolshevik faction against Julius Martov 's Mensheviks . Lenin briefly returned to Russia during

SECTION 20

#1732787126334

3058-642: A literary phenomenon, with film debate, that is, with the making of film-objects." Explode the barrier between the artistic film and the newsreel. The kinoks organized themselves in the same way the Soviets did - headed by the "Council of Three" (Vertov and two others), the rest were thought of as comrades in film-making. They celebrated their difference from traditional film-makers. Addressing his contemporary cinematographers, Vertov wrote, "However insignificant our practical achievement, nevertheless it's more than your years of nothing ." The kinoks believed that through their method of Kino-Eye they were "keeping stride with

3197-421: A mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it. Now and forever, I free myself from human immobility, I am in constant motion, I draw near, then away from objects, I crawl under, I climb onto them... Now I, a camera, fling myself along their resultant, maneuvering in the chaos of movement, recording movement, starting with movements composed of the most complex combinations... My path leads to

3336-581: A meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on 10 October, where he again argued that the party should lead an armed insurrection to topple the Provisional Government. This time the argument won with ten votes against two. Critics of the plan, Zinoviev and Kamenev, argued that Russian workers would not support a violent coup against the regime and that there was no clear evidence for Lenin's assertion that all of Europe

3475-472: A movement of filmmakers known as the kinoks , or kino-oki (kino- eyes ). Vertov, along with other kino artists declared it their mission to abolish all non-documentary styles of film-making, a radical approach to movie making. Most of Vertov's films were highly controversial, and the kinok movement was despised by many filmmakers. Vertov's crowning achievement, Man with a Movie Camera , was his response to critics who rejected his previous film, A Sixth Part of

3614-594: A multi-party Constituent Assembly , but by 1918 centralised power in the new Communist Party. Opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror , and tens of thousands were killed or interned in concentration camps. Responding to devastation, famine , and popular uprisings, Lenin reversed his policy of war communism in 1921, and encouraged economic growth through the New Economic Policy . His administration defeated right and left-wing anti-Bolshevik armies in

3753-400: A nearby flat. There, he joined a zemlyachestvo , a form of university society that represented the men of a particular region. This group elected him as its representative to the university's zemlyachestvo council, and he took part in a December demonstration against government restrictions that banned student societies. The police arrested Lenin and accused him of being a ringleader in

3892-474: A news sheet, Rabochee delo ( Workers' Cause ), he was among 40 activists arrested in St. Petersburg and charged with sedition. Refused legal representation or bail, Lenin denied all charges against him but remained imprisoned for a year before sentencing. He spent this time theorising and writing. In this work he noted that the rise of industrial capitalism in Russia had caused large numbers of peasants to move to

4031-556: A passage for them through Germany, with which Russia was then at war. Recognising that these dissidents could cause problems for their Russian enemies, the German government agreed to permit 32 Russian citizens to travel by train through their territory, among them Lenin and his wife. For political reasons, Lenin and the Germans agreed to a cover story that Lenin had travelled by sealed train carriage through German territory, but in fact

4170-485: A period of about three years. Four cities – Moscow , Kiev , Kharkov and Odessa – were the shooting locations. Man with a Movie Camera was not always a highly regarded work. The film was criticized for both the stagings and the stark experimentation, possibly as a result of its director's frequent assailing of fiction film as a new "opiate of the masses". Vertov's Soviet contemporaries criticized its focus on form over content, with Sergei Eisenstein even deriding

4309-480: A pure communist society . He began arguing for a Bolshevik-led armed insurrection to topple the government, but at a clandestine meeting of the party's central committee this idea was rejected. Lenin then headed by train and by foot to Finland, arriving at Helsinki on 10 August, where he hid away in safe houses belonging to Bolshevik sympathisers. In August 1917, while Lenin was in Finland, General Lavr Kornilov ,

Kino-Eye - Misplaced Pages Continue

4448-419: A response to what was happening in much of Soviet cinema at the time Vertov entered the playing field. He wanted a revolutionary form, a form that could represent truth in the way he believed most "acted" films did not. Vertov credited American action films as the first form to harness cinema's incredible dynamism and the use of the close-up , but wanted to explore these forms even more deeply with Kino-Eye. While

4587-474: A revolutionary government which took steps towards socialism, while his critics accuse him of establishing a dictatorship which oversaw mass killings and political repression . Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Streletskaya Ulitsa, Simbirsk, now Ulyanovsk , on 22 April 1870, and baptised six days later; as a child, he was known as Volodya the common nickname variant of Vladimir. He

4726-412: A rhythm and language on it, and transcending it." The National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre placed it in 2021 at number three of their list of the 100 best films in the history of Ukrainian cinema . On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 98% of 40 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.10/10. The website's consensus reads: "Groundbreaking in its exploration of

4865-480: A scenario) WITHOUT THE HELP OF THEATRE (a film without actors, without sets, etc.) This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature. This manifesto echoes an earlier one that Vertov wrote in 1922, in which he disavowed popular films he felt were indebted to literature and theater. Working within

5004-472: A script) WITHOUT THE HELP OF THE THEATRE (a film without actors, without sets, etc.). This new experimental work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema - ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY - on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature." Unashamedly avant-garde, Man with a Movie Camera captures every day actions such as getting out of bed, washing, and even giving birth. It

5143-463: A scripted film. In a 1929 note on the "History of the Kinoks," Vertov wrote: "I don't know who's opposed to whom. It's difficult to stand up against the cinema that is acted. It represents 98 percent of our world production. We simply feel that the cinema's chief function is the recording of documents, of facts, the recording of life, of historical processes. Acted cinema is a replacement for theater, it

5282-424: A series of Petrograd safe houses. Fearing that he would be killed, Lenin and fellow senior Bolshevik Grigory Zinoviev escaped Petrograd in disguise, relocating to Razliv . There, Lenin began work on the book that became The State and Revolution , an exposition on how he believed the socialist state would develop after the proletariat revolution, and how from then on the state would gradually wither away, leaving

5421-425: A speech to Bolshevik supporters condemning the Provisional Government and again calling for a continent-wide European proletarian revolution. Over the following days, he spoke at Bolshevik meetings, lambasting those who wanted reconciliation with the Mensheviks and revealing his " April Theses ", an outline of his plans for the Bolsheviks, which he had written on the journey from Switzerland. He publicly condemned both

5560-487: A split-screen tracking shot; the sides have opposite Dutch angles). Man with a Movie Camera was largely dismissed upon its initial release; the work's fast cutting , self-reflexivity , and emphasis on form over content were all subjects of criticism. In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound poll, however, film critics voted it the 8th greatest film ever made , the 9th greatest in

5699-630: A spy, Roman Malinovsky , to act as a vocal Lenin supporter within the party. Various Bolsheviks expressed their suspicions about Malinovsky to Lenin, although it is unclear if the latter was aware of the spy's duplicity; it is possible that he used Malinovsky to feed false information to the Okhrana. In August 1910, Lenin attended the 8th Congress of the Second International , an international meeting of socialists, in Copenhagen as

Kino-Eye - Misplaced Pages Continue

5838-413: A woman getting dressed, and chess pieces being swept to the center of the board (a shot spliced in backwards so the pieces expand outward and stand in position). Stop-motion is used for several shots, including an unmanned camera on a tripod standing up, showing off its mechanical parts, and then walking off screen. Vertov was an early pioneer in documentary film-making during the late 1920s. He belonged to

5977-411: A woman giving birth, and a funeral procession. Much of the film is concerned with people of varying economic classes navigating urban environments. On occasion, the film's editor (Svilova) is shown working with strips of film and various pieces of editing equipment. Despite claiming to be without actors, the film features a few staged situations. This includes some of the cameraman's actions, the scene of

6116-415: Is in keeping with modernist thoughts in how it challenges art both conceptually and in practice, incorporating industrial life and technology as featured subjects of the film and implementing new editing techniques. In utilizing these techniques, the artist creates a modern interpretation of city life. Some have mistakenly stated that many visual ideas, such as the quick editing, the close-ups of machinery,

6255-403: Is in the editing and cutting together of these fragments that meaning is made. Hicks writes, "In its very form Man with a Movie Camera is a defence of documentary. For Vertov, however, the defence of documentary was inextricable from the defence of the integrity of cinema itself, since documentary was its purest, least theatrical form." To Vertov, the film was his fullest physical manifestation of

6394-499: Is the era of the Civil War missing from your remembrances? It was then, after all, that a very large area of Soviet cinema was born in joyful labor. And from 1918 on, after all, we studied film writing, or how to write with a camera... At that time I specialized in factual film writing. I tried to become a newsreel film writer." In many ways, Kino-Eye resulted from newsreels and styles of Bolshevik journalism. Jeremy Hicks writes that

6533-402: Is theater restored. A compromise tendency still exists, directed toward the fusion or blending of the two. We take a stand against all that." The goal of a non-staged, was the expansion of the cinematic field of vision, and thereby of the potential truth of that vision. It became largely recognized, as members of the film community could not help but recognize the success of works like Man with

6672-483: The Civil War ." Because of the resulting shortage of equipment and other resources, much of the footage shot in Russia in the 1920s was actually used for more "necessary" forms of film such as the newsreel. In fact, the vast majority of "entertainment" films shown in the 1920s were imported from Hollywood , and it was not until 1927 that Soviet-made films outsold imported films in the box office. Kino-Eye developed as

6811-455: The July Days , took place while Lenin was away, but upon learning that demonstrators had violently clashed with government forces, he returned to Petrograd and called for calm. Responding to the violence, the government ordered the arrest of Lenin and other prominent Bolsheviks, raiding their offices, and publicly alleging that he was a German agent provocateur . Evading arrest, Lenin hid in

6950-521: The N did not stand for anything, a popular misconception later arose that it represented Nikolai . Under this pseudonym, in 1902 he published his most influential publication to date, the pamphlet What Is to Be Done? , which outlined his thoughts on the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat to revolution. Nadya joined Lenin in Munich and became his secretary. They continued their political agitation, as Lenin wrote for Iskra and drafted

7089-719: The October Revolution , in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the regime. Lenin's government redistributed land to the peasantry, issued a number of legislative decrees , nationalised banks and industry, withdrew from the war by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers , and promoted world revolution through the Communist International . It initially shared power with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and allowed

SECTION 50

#1732787126334

7228-670: The Paris Commune of 1871 , which he considered an early prototype for a proletarian government. Financed by his mother, he stayed in a Swiss health spa before travelling to Berlin , where he studied for six weeks at the Staatsbibliothek and met the Marxist Wilhelm Liebknecht . Returning to Russia with a stash of illegal revolutionary publications, he travelled to various cities distributing literature to striking workers. While involved in producing

7367-565: The Penza Institute for the Nobility . In mid-1863, Ilya married Maria, the well-educated daughter of a wealthy Swedish Lutheran mother and a Russian Jewish father who had converted to Christianity and worked as a physician. According to historian Petrovsky-Shtern , it is likely that Lenin was unaware of his mother's half-Jewish ancestry, which was only discovered by Anna after his death. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained

7506-538: The "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats ; around 200 copies were illegally printed in 1894. Hoping to cement connections between his Social-Democrats and Emancipation of Labour , a group of Russian Marxists based in Switzerland , Lenin visited the country to meet group members Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod . He proceeded to Paris to meet Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue and to research

7645-615: The 2022 poll , and in 2014 it was named the best documentary of all time in the same magazine. The National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre placed it in 2021 at number three of their list of the 100 best films in the history of Ukrainian cinema . In 2015, the film received a restoration using a 35mm print of the only known complete cut of the film. Restoration efforts were conducted by the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam , with additional digital work by Lobster Films. While

7784-514: The Bolshevik Centre to Paris; although Lenin disagreed, he moved to the city in December 1908. Lenin disliked Paris, lambasting it as "a foul hole", and while there he sued a motorist who knocked him off his bike. Lenin became very critical of Bogdanov's view that Russia's proletariat had to develop a socialist culture to become a successful revolutionary vehicle. Instead, Lenin favoured a vanguard of socialist intelligentsia who would lead

7923-743: The Bolshevik faction between his and Bogdanov's followers, accusing the latter of deviating from Marxism. In May 1908, Lenin lived briefly in London, where he used the British Museum Reading Room to write Materialism and Empirio-criticism , an attack on what he described as the "bourgeois-reactionary falsehood" of Bogdanov's relativism. Lenin's factionalism began to alienate increasing numbers of Bolsheviks, including his former close supporters Alexei Rykov and Lev Kamenev . The Okhrana exploited his factionalist attitude by sending

8062-550: The Bolshevik newspaper Pravda , and giving public speeches in Petrograd aimed at converting workers, soldiers, sailors, and peasants to his cause. Sensing growing frustration among Bolshevik supporters, Lenin suggested an armed political demonstration in Petrograd to test the government's response. Amid deteriorating health, he left the city to recuperate in the Finnish village of Neivola. The Bolsheviks' armed demonstration,

8201-729: The Bolsheviks changed their name from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to the Russian Communist Party, as Lenin wanted to distance his group from the increasingly reformist German Social Democratic Party and emphasize its goal of a communist society. Although ultimate power officially rested with Sovnarkom and the Executive Committee (VTSIK) elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets (ARCS),

8340-415: The Bolsheviks had long espoused the newspaper as the main source of fact and truth. Vertov's cinematic form was a direct response to the truth that he found in journalism and its representations of everyday life. He hoped for Kino-Eye to capture cinematic truth. Like many of its contemporaneous art forms, Kino-Eye was an attempt to model objectivity amid the contradictions of Soviet modernity . The Kino-Eye

8479-685: The Bolsheviks regained dominance of the RSDLP at its Fifth Congress , held in London in May 1907. As the Tsarist government cracked down on opposition, both by disbanding Russia's legislative assembly, the Second Duma , and by ordering its secret police, the Okhrana , to arrest revolutionaries, Lenin fled Finland for Switzerland. There, he tried to exchange those banknotes stolen in Tiflis that had identifiable serial numbers on them. Alexander Bogdanov and other prominent Bolsheviks decided to relocate

SECTION 60

#1732787126334

8618-628: The Bolsheviks split completely with the Mensheviks; many Bolsheviks refused, and both groups attended the Third RSDLP Congress , held in London in April 1905. Lenin presented many of his ideas in the pamphlet Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution , published in August 1905. Here, he predicted that Russia's liberal bourgeoisie would be sated by a transition to constitutional monarchy and thus betray

8757-485: The Bolsheviks to return to the open political arena. Fearing a counter-revolution from right-wing forces hostile to socialism, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who dominated the Petrograd Soviet had been instrumental in pressuring the government to normalise relations with the Bolsheviks. Both the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had lost much popular support because of their affiliation with

8896-592: The Bolsheviks' activities, Lenin endorsed the idea of robbing post offices, railway stations, trains, and banks. Under the lead of Leonid Krasin , a group of Bolsheviks began carrying out such criminal actions, the best-known taking place in June 1907, when a group of Bolsheviks acting under the leadership of Joseph Stalin committed an armed robbery of the State Bank in Tiflis , Georgia. Although he briefly supported

9035-747: The Central Committee, and the Politburo. The only individual with comparable influence was Lenin's right-hand man, Yakov Sverdlov , who died in March 1919 as a result of the Spanish flu pandemic. In November 1917, Lenin and his wife took a two-room flat within the Smolny Institute; the following month, they went on a brief holiday in Halila, Finland. In January 1918, he survived an assassination attempt in Petrograd; Fritz Platten , who

9174-534: The Communist Party was de facto in control of Russia, as acknowledged by its members at the time. By 1918, Sovnarkom began acting unilaterally, citing a need for expediency, with the ARCS and VTSIK becoming increasingly marginalized, so the soviets no longer had a role in governing Russia. During 1918 and 1919, the government expelled Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries from the soviets. Russia had become

9313-533: The Highest Stage of Capitalism , which argued that imperialism was a product of monopoly capitalism , as capitalists sought to increase their profits by extending into new territories where wages were lower and raw materials cheaper. He believed that competition and conflict would increase and that war between the imperialist powers would continue until they were overthrown by proletariat revolution and socialism established. He spent much of this time reading

9452-436: The Mensheviks accused Lenin of being a despot and autocrat. Enraged at the Mensheviks, Lenin resigned from the Iskra editorial board and in May 1904 published the anti-Menshevik tract One Step Forward, Two Steps Back . The stress made Lenin ill, and to recuperate he holidayed in Switzerland. The Bolshevik faction grew in strength; by spring 1905, the whole RSDLP Central Committee was Bolshevik, and in December they founded

9591-428: The Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, who dominated the influential Petrograd Soviet , for supporting the Provisional Government, denouncing them as traitors to socialism. Considering the government to be just as imperialist as the Tsarist regime, he advocated immediate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, rule by soviets , the nationalisation of industry and banks, and the state expropriation of land, all with

9730-408: The Provisional Government and its unpopular continuation of the war. The Bolsheviks capitalised on this, and soon the pro-Bolshevik Marxist Trotsky was elected leader of the Petrograd Soviet. In September, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the workers' sections of both the Moscow and Petrograd Soviets. Recognising that the situation was safer for him, Lenin returned to Petrograd. There he attended

9869-546: The RSDLP programme, attacking ideological dissenters and external critics, particularly the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), a Narodnik agrarian-socialist group founded in 1901. Despite remaining a Marxist, he accepted the Narodnik view on the revolutionary power of the Russian peasantry, accordingly, penning the 1903 pamphlet To the Village Poor . To evade Bavarian police, Lenin moved to London with Iskra in April 1902, where he befriended fellow Russian-Ukrainian Marxist Leon Trotsky . Lenin fell ill with erysipelas and

10008-748: The RSDLP's representative, following this with a holiday in Stockholm with his mother. With his wife and sisters, he then moved to France, settling first in Bombon and then Paris. Here, he became a close friend to the French Bolshevik Inessa Armand ; some biographers suggest that they had an extra-marital affair from 1910 to 1912. Meanwhile, at a Paris meeting in June 1911, the RSDLP Central Committee decided to move their focus of operations back to Russia, ordering

10147-473: The Russian Civil War, after which several non-Russian nations that had broken away from the empire after 1917 were re-united in the new Soviet Union in 1922; others, notably Poland, gained independence. Lenin suffered three debilitating strokes in 1922 and 1923 before his death in 1924, with Joseph Stalin succeeding him as the pre-eminent figure in the Soviet government. Widely considered one of

10286-761: The Russian Republic into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic . The government also switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar , aligning Russia with Europe. In November 1917, Sovnarkom abolished Russia's legal system, replacing it with "revolutionary conscience". Courts were replaced by Revolutionary Tribunals for counter-revolutionary crimes, and People's Courts for civil and criminal cases, instructed to follow Sovnarkom decrees and

10425-476: The World . Critics had declared that Vertov's overuse of " intertitles " was inconsistent with the film-making style to which the "kinoks" subscribed. Working within that context, Vertov dealt with a lot of fear in anticipation of the film's release. He requested a warning to be printed in the Soviet central Communist newspaper Pravda , which spoke directly of the film's experimental, controversial nature. Vertov

10564-814: The agrarian-socialists and promoted a Marxist analysis of Russian economic development. Published under the pseudonym of Vladimir Ilin, upon publication it received predominantly poor reviews. After his exile, Lenin settled in Pskov in early 1900. There, he began raising funds for a newspaper, Iskra ( Spark ), a new organ of the Russian Marxist party, now calling itself the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In July 1900, Lenin left Russia for Western Europe; in Switzerland he met other Russian Marxists, and at

10703-500: The cameramen of the title, the film editor, and the modern Soviet Union they discover and present in the film. Man with a Movie Camera is famous for the range of cinematic techniques Vertov invented, employed or developed, such as multiple exposure , fast motion , slow motion , freeze frames , match cuts , jump cuts , split screens , Dutch angles , extreme close-ups , tracking shots , reversed footage, stop motion animations and self-reflexive visuals (at one point it features

10842-452: The cinema as a new form of meaning-making. Crucially for Vertov, Kino-Eye allowed the meaning to be in the hands of the viewer, not the script. Kinochestvo was the main cinematographic mechanism of Kino-Eye. In his writings, Vertov chastised contemporary cinematography as being too concerned with elements outside of the film shot itself, such as music or literature. Contrary to traditional film-making techniques, Kino-Eye, through Kinochestvo,

10981-446: The cities, where they formed a proletariat. From his Marxist perspective, Lenin argued that this Russian proletariat would develop class consciousness , which would in turn lead them to violently overthrow Tsarism , the aristocracy , and the bourgeoisie and to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat that would move toward socialism. In February 1897, Lenin was sentenced without trial to three years' exile in eastern Siberia. He

11120-558: The city of Kazan , but not the university. On his return, he joined Nikolai Fedoseev 's revolutionary circle, through which he discovered Karl Marx 's 1867 book Capital . This sparked his interest in Marxism , a socio-political theory that argued that society developed in stages, that this development resulted from class struggle , and that capitalist society would ultimately give way to socialist society and then communist society . Wary of his political views, Lenin's mother bought

11259-656: The civil war for freedom is blazing up. Moscow and the South, the Caucasus and Poland are ready to join the proletariat of St. Petersburg. The slogan of the workers has become: Death or Freedom! — Lenin on the Revolution of 1905 In response to the revolution of 1905, which had failed to overthrow the government, Tsar Nicholas II accepted a series of liberal reforms in his October Manifesto . In this climate, Lenin felt it safe to return to Saint Petersburg. Joining

11398-582: The closure of the Bolshevik Centre and its newspaper, Proletari . Seeking to rebuild his influence in the party, Lenin arranged for a party conference to be held in Prague in January 1912, and although 16 of the 18 attendants were Bolsheviks, he was heavily criticised for his factionalist tendencies and failed to boost his status within the party. Moving to Kraków in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria ,

11537-478: The commander-in-chief of the Russian Army, sent troops to Petrograd in what appeared to be a military coup attempt against the Provisional Government. Premier Alexander Kerensky turned to the Petrograd Soviet, including its Bolshevik members, for help, allowing the revolutionaries to organise workers as Red Guards to defend the city. The coup petered out before it reached Petrograd, but the events had allowed

11676-408: The continent to convert the "imperialist war" into a continent-wide "civil war" with the proletariat pitted against the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. In July 1916, Lenin's mother died, but he was unable to attend her funeral. Her death deeply affected him, and he became depressed, fearing that he too would die before seeing the proletarian revolution. In September 1917, Lenin published Imperialism,

11815-559: The country, establishing the Russian Provisional Government and converting the Empire into a new Russian Republic . When Lenin learned of this from his base in Switzerland, he celebrated with other dissidents. He decided to return to Russia to take charge of the Bolsheviks but found that most passages into the country were blocked due to the ongoing conflict. He organised a plan with other dissidents to negotiate

11954-453: The creation of a fresh perception of the world. I decipher in a new way a world unknown to you." Kino-Eye was also a reaction to overly "acted" films that Vertov despised. It was positioned diametrically opposite what the kinoks thought of as "staged" film. They wanted to capture "real life," which they believed could only be achieved through the objectivity of Kino-Eye. The kinoks held that actors could only ever produce "pseudorealism" through

12093-539: The demonstration; he was expelled from the university, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs exiled him to his family's Kokushkino estate. There, he read voraciously, becoming enamoured with Nikolay Chernyshevsky 's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is to Be Done? Lenin's mother was concerned by her son's radicalisation, and was instrumental in convincing the Interior Ministry to allow him to return to

12232-446: The editorial board of Novaya Zhizn ( New Life ), a radical legal newspaper run by Maria Andreyeva , he used it to discuss issues facing the RSDLP. He encouraged the party to seek out a much wider membership, and advocated the continual escalation of violent confrontation, believing both to be necessary for a successful revolution. Recognising that membership fees and donations from a few wealthy sympathisers were insufficient to finance

12371-464: The eponymous Man of the film. Vertov's feature film, produced by the film studio All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration (VUFKU), presents urban life in Moscow, Kiev and Odessa during the late 1920s. It has no actors. From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it can be said to have "characters", they are

12510-420: The fact that the human eye fixes for a certain space of time that which holds the attention." Man with a Movie Camera is now regarded by many as one of the greatest films ever made , ranking 9th in the 2022 Sight & Sound poll of the world's best films. In 2009, Roger Ebert wrote: "It made explicit and poetic the astonishing gift the cinema made possible, of arranging what we see, ordering it, imposing

12649-470: The failed Revolution of 1905 , and during the First World War campaigned for its transformation into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution , which, as a Marxist, he believed would cause the end of capitalism and the rise of socialism . After the February Revolution of 1917 ousted Tsar Nicholas II and established a Provisional Government , Lenin returned to Russia and played a leading role in

12788-726: The film as "pointless camera hooliganism". The work was largely dismissed in the West as well. Documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha said that in Britain, Vertov was "regarded really as rather a joke, you know. All this cutting, and one camera photographing another camera – it was all trickery, and we didn't take it seriously." The pace of the film's editing – more than four times faster than a typical 1929 feature, with approximately 1,775 separate shots – also perturbed some viewers, including The New York Times ' reviewer Mordaunt Hall : "The producer, Dziga Vertov, does not take into consideration

12927-495: The film is in the public domain , this restored version was licensed to Flicker Alley for release on Blu-ray . The film is divided into six separate parts, one for each film reel on which it would have originally been printed. Each part begins with a number appearing on screen and falling down flat. The film makes use of many editing techniques , such as superimposition, slow motion, fast motion, rapid cross-cutting, and montage. The film has an unabashedly avant-garde style, and

13066-413: The future of non-Russian ethnic groups in the Empire. Due to the ailing health of both Lenin and his wife, they moved to the rural town of Biały Dunajec , before heading to Bern for Nadya to have surgery on her goitre . The [First World] war is being waged for the division of colonies and the robbery of foreign territory; thieves have fallen out–and to refer to the defeats at a given moment of one of

13205-536: The government in the Winter Palace and overcame it and arrested its ministers after the cruiser Aurora , controlled by Bolshevik seamen, fired a blank shot to signal the start of the revolution. During the insurrection, Lenin gave a speech to the Petrograd Soviet announcing that the Provisional Government had been overthrown. The Bolsheviks declared the formation of a new government, the Council of People's Commissars , or Sovnarkom. Lenin initially turned down

13344-603: The idea of reconciliation between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin's advocacy of violence and robbery was condemned by the Mensheviks at the Fourth RSDLP Congress , held in Stockholm in April 1906. After Lenin escaped to Finland from Russia, he was involved in setting up a Bolshevik Centre in Kuokkala , Grand Duchy of Finland , which was at the time an autonomous state controlled by the Russian Empire, before

13483-521: The infinite possibilities of what cinema can be". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that the work "is visibly excited about the new medium's possibility, dense with ideas, packed with energy: it echoes Un Chien Andalou , anticipates Vigo 's À propos de Nice and the New Wave generally, and even Riefenstahl 's Olympia ". The film, originally released in 1929, was silent and accompanied in theaters with live music. It has since been released

13622-413: The intention of establishing a proletariat government and pushing toward a socialist society. By contrast, the Mensheviks believed that Russia was insufficiently developed to transition to socialism and accused Lenin of trying to plunge the new Republic into civil war. Over the coming months Lenin campaigned for his policies, attending the meetings of the Bolshevik Central Committee, prolifically writing for

13761-456: The kinoks' films rarely became hits. Several films did gain national and even international recognition, such as Vertov's Three Songs of Lenin and Enthusiasm . Largely considered Vertov's lone masterpiece, Man with a Movie Camera is the greatest example of Kino-Eye. According to Vertov, it required more work than his previous Kino-Eye films because of its complexity in both filming and editing. Without words or titles, it relies solely on

13900-557: The leading position of Chairman , suggesting Trotsky for the job, but other Bolsheviks insisted and ultimately Lenin relented. Lenin and other Bolsheviks then attended the Second Congress of Soviets on 26 and 27 October and announced the creation of the new government. Menshevik attendees condemned the illegitimate seizure of power and the risk of civil war. In the early days of the regime, Lenin adjusted his rhetoric so as not to alienate Russia's population, and spoke about having

14039-424: The medium, Man with a Movie Camera is proof that cinema in and of itself can be a source of grand entertainment and sociological value." Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 96 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Man with a Movie Camera has been interpreted as an optimistic work. Jonathan Romney called it "an exuberant manifesto that celebrates

14178-428: The most significant and influential figures of the 20th century, Lenin was the posthumous subject of a pervasive personality cult within the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. Under Stalin, he became an ideological figurehead of Marxism–Leninism and a prominent influence over the international communist movement . A controversial and highly divisive figure, Lenin is praised by his supporters for establishing

14317-412: The movie is fast-moving. The sequences and close-ups capture emotional qualities that could not be fully portrayed through the use of words. The film's lack of "actors" and "sets" makes for a unique view of the everyday world; one that, according to a title card, is directed toward the creation of a new cinematic language that is "[separated] from the language of theatre and literature". It was filmed over

14456-525: The need for a strong leadership with complete control over the party. Lenin's supporters were in the majority, and he termed them the "majoritarians" ( bol'sheviki in Russian; Bolsheviks ); in response, Martov termed his followers the "minoritarians" ( men'sheviki ; Mensheviks ). Arguments between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks continued after the conference; the Bolsheviks accused their rivals of being opportunists and reformists who lacked discipline, while

14595-444: The new technique of montage and its proponents like Kuleshov and Eisenstein had begun to change the landscape of Soviet film, Vertov's Kino-Eye found popularity in their universality. Jay Leyda writes: "While most films produced at that time approached revolutionary subject-matter with attitudes strongly influenced by the cheapest theatrical and adventure-film traditions, both in selection and in method, Vertov's films dared to treat

14734-775: The newspaper Vperyod ( Forward ). In January 1905, the Bloody Sunday massacre of protesters in St. Petersburg sparked a spate of civil unrest in the Russian Empire known as the Revolution of 1905 . Lenin urged Bolsheviks to take a greater role in the events, encouraging violent insurrection. In doing so, he adopted SR slogans regarding "armed insurrection", "mass terror", and "the expropriation of gentry land", resulting in Menshevik accusations that he had deviated from orthodox Marxism. In turn, he insisted that

14873-412: The present and, through the present, the future, with an approach as revolutionary as the material he treated." In fact, Kino-Eye was based more fundamentally on the techniques of the newsreel than on montage or any entertainment-filmmaking process. Over a decade after the Civil War in 1939, Vertov wrote: "Comrades, masters of Soviet cinema! ... One thing... seems strange and incomprehensible to me. Why

15012-421: The revolution; instead, he argued that the proletariat would have to build an alliance with the peasantry to overthrow the Tsarist regime and establish the "provisional revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry". The uprising has begun. Force against Force. Street fighting is raging, barricades are being thrown up, rifles are cracking, guns are booming. Rivers of blood are flowing,

15151-560: The right of self-determination ... Long live the revolution! — Lenin's political programme, October 1917 Upon taking power, Lenin's regime issued several decrees. The first was the Decree on Land , nationalizing the landed estates of the aristocracy and the Orthodox Church for redistribution to peasants by local governments. This contrasted with Lenin's preference for agricultural collectivisation but acknowledged

15290-602: The right to secede and form independent nation-states. Many declared independence ( Finland , Lithuania in December 1917, Latvia and Ukraine in January 1918, Estonia in February 1918, Transcaucasia in April 1918, and Poland in November 1918). The Bolsheviks then promoted communist parties in these new states, while at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of the Soviets in July 1918, a constitution reformed

15429-460: The socialist movement, he encouraged the founding of revolutionary cells in Russia's industrial centres. By late 1894, he was leading a Marxist workers' circle, and meticulously covered his tracks to evade police spies. He began a romantic relationship with Nadezhda "Nadya" Krupskaya , a Marxist school teacher. He also authored a political tract criticising the Narodnik agrarian-socialists, What

15568-489: The status of hereditary nobleman . Both of Lenin's parents were monarchists and liberal conservatives , being committed to the emancipation reform of 1861 introduced by the reformist Tsar Alexander II ; they avoided political radicals and there is no evidence that the police ever put them under surveillance for subversive thought. Every summer they holidayed at a rural manor in Kokushkino . Among his siblings, Lenin

15707-629: The store window displays, even the shots of a typewriter keyboard are borrowed from Walter Ruttmann 's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), which predates Man with a Movie Camera by two years, but as Vertov wrote to the German press in 1929, these techniques and images had been developed and employed by him in his Kino-Pravda newsreels and documentaries during the previous ten years, all of which predate Berlin . Vertov's pioneering cinematic concepts actually inspired other abstract films by Ruttmann and others, including writer, translator, filmmaker and critic Liu Na'ou (1905–1940), whose The Man Who Has

15846-466: The subject matter varies greatly. The titular man with the movie camera ( Mikhail Kaufman , Vertov's brother) travels to diverse locations to capture a variety of shots. He appears in artistic images such as a superimposed shot of the cameraman setting up his camera atop a second, mountainous camera, and another superimposed shot of the cameraman inside a beer glass. General images include laborers at work, sporting events, couples getting married and divorced,

15985-472: The theory of Kino-Eye. Responding to critics and those trying to intellectualize the film, he wrote, "In fact, the film is only the sum of the facts recorded on film." This simplicity and goal of objectivity is the foundation of Kino-Eye. Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [ O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin , was

16124-775: The thieves in order to identify the interests of all thieves with the interests of the nation or the fatherland is an unconscionable bourgeois lie. — Lenin on his interpretation of the First World War Lenin was in Galicia when the First World War broke out. The war pitted the Russian Empire against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and due to his Russian citizenship, Lenin was arrested and briefly imprisoned until his anti-Tsarist credentials were explained. Lenin and his wife returned to Bern, before relocating to Zürich in February 1916. Lenin

16263-465: The time, Lenin's elder brother Alexander, whom he affectionately knew as Sasha, was studying at Saint Petersburg University . Involved in political agitation against the absolute monarchy of the reactionary Tsar Alexander III , Alexander studied the writings of banned leftists and organised anti-government protests. He joined a revolutionary cell bent on assassinating the Tsar and was selected to construct

16402-530: The train was not truly sealed, and the passengers were allowed to disembark to, for example, spend the night in Frankfurt. The group travelled by train from Zürich to Sassnitz , proceeding by ferry to Trelleborg , Sweden, and from there to the Haparanda – Tornio border crossing and then to Helsinki before taking the final train to Petrograd. Arriving at Petrograd's Finland Station in April, Lenin gave

16541-541: The transfer without compensation of all land—landlord, imperial, and monastery—to the peasants' committees; it will defend the soldiers' rights, introducing a complete democratisation of the army; it will establish workers' control over industry; it will ensure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly on the date set; it will supply the cities with bread and the villages with articles of first necessity; and it will secure to all nationalities inhabiting Russia

16680-614: The view of the agrarian-socialist Narodnik movement, which held that the peasantry could establish socialism in Russia by forming peasant communes, thereby bypassing capitalism. This Narodnik view developed in the 1860s with the People's Freedom Party and was then dominant within the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin rejected the premise of the agrarian-socialist argument but was influenced by agrarian-socialists like Pyotr Tkachev and Sergei Nechaev and befriended several Narodniks. In May 1890, Maria, who retained societal influence as

16819-466: The visual language of film to tell its story, departing wholly from the languages of theatre and literature that the kinoks believed had infiltrated cinema. Vertov thought of the film as the culmination of his previous Kino-Eye features, writing: "The film Man with a Movie Camera represents AN EXPERIMENT IN THE CINEMATIC TRANSMISSION of visual phenomena WITHOUT THE HELP OF INTERTITLES (a film without intertitles) WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCRIPT (a film without

16958-549: The vote, losing to the agrarian-focused Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin argued that the election did not reflect the people's will, claiming the electorate was unaware of the Bolsheviks' programme, and that candidacy lists were outdated, having been drawn up before the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries split from the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the newly elected Russian Constituent Assembly convened in Petrograd in January 1918. Sovnarkom claimed it

17097-723: The widespread peasant land seizures that had already taken place. In November 1917, the government issued the Decree on the Press, closing opposition media outlets deemed counter-revolutionary. Although claimed to be temporary, the decree faced criticism, including from Bolsheviks, for undermining freedom of the press . In November 1917, Lenin issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia , granting non-Russian ethnic groups

17236-816: The widow of a nobleman, persuaded the authorities to allow Lenin to take his exams externally at the University of St Petersburg, where he obtained the equivalent of a first-class degree with honours. The graduation celebrations were marred when his sister Olga died of typhoid . Lenin remained in Samara for several years, working first as a legal assistant for a regional court and then for a local lawyer. He devoted much time to radical politics, remaining active in Sklyarenko's group and formulating ideas about how Marxism applied to Russia. Inspired by Plekhanov's work, Lenin collected data on Russian society, using it to support

17375-456: The working-classes in revolution. Furthermore, Bogdanov, influenced by Ernst Mach , believed that all concepts of the world were relative, whereas Lenin stuck to the orthodox Marxist view that there was an objective reality independent of human observation. Bogdanov and Lenin holidayed together at Maxim Gorky 's villa in Capri in April 1908; on returning to Paris, Lenin encouraged a split within

17514-529: The works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Ludwig Feuerbach , and Aristotle , all of whom had been key influences on Marx. This changed Lenin's interpretation of Marxism; whereas he once believed that policies could be developed based on predetermined scientific principles, he concluded that the only test of whether a policy was correct was its practice. He still perceived himself as an orthodox Marxist, but he began to diverge from some of Marx's predictions about societal development; whereas Marx had believed that

17653-439: The worldwide proletarian revolution." Their mission was to reveal the mysteries of life to the masses through their films. Their form was deeply tied to Soviet socialism , as they wanted to make cinema available to a working class audience. Still, the kinoks were not met with universal welcome. Eisenstein chastised them as wanting "to remove cinema from the ranks of the arts at all costs." Because of their highly experimental nature,

17792-475: Was Vertov's solution to what he saw as the diluted nature of "propagandistic-artistic" Soviet film. He thought of film as "dynamic geometry," and therefore Kino-Eye would exploit dynamism in geometric space in a way that the eye could not. By manipulating the camera to exploit movement along with new editing techniques that focused on film speed and transitions, Kino-Eye would construct a new, objective depiction of reality. In 1923, Vertov wrote: "I am kino-eye, I am

17931-697: Was angry that the German Social Democratic Party was supporting the German war effort, which was a direct contravention of the Second International's Stuttgart resolution that socialist parties would oppose the conflict and saw the Second International as defunct. He attended the Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915 and the Kienthal Conference in April 1916, urging socialists across

18070-566: Was closest to his sister Olga , whom he often bossed around; he had an extremely competitive nature and could be destructive, but usually admitted his misbehaviour. A keen sportsman, he spent much of his free time outdoors or playing chess, and excelled at school, the disciplinarian and conservative Simbirsk Classical Gymnasium. In January 1886, when Lenin was 15, his father died of a brain haemorrhage. Subsequently, his behaviour became erratic and confrontational, and he renounced his belief in God. At

18209-464: Was counter-revolutionary because it sought to remove power from the soviets, but the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks denied this. The Bolsheviks presented a motion to strip the Assembly of most of its legal powers; when the Assembly rejected this, Sovnarkom declared it counter-revolutionary and forcibly disbanded it. Lenin rejected repeated calls, including from some Bolsheviks, to establish

18348-617: Was granted a few days in Saint Petersburg to put his affairs in order and used this time to meet with the Social-Democrats, who had renamed themselves the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class . His journey to eastern Siberia took 11 weeks, for much of which he was accompanied by his mother and sisters. Deemed only a minor threat to the government, he was exiled to Shushenskoye , Minusinsky District , where he

18487-490: Was interested in the "non-theatrical" film, that is, in films without script or composite characters, that would simply capture life "unawares," or as it really was. Kinochestvo would capture the non-acted film in order to produce a "truthful" depiction of life for cinema. Vertov and his followers that took up Kino-Eye as their method of film production referred to themselves as kinoks ("cinema-eye men") rather than "cinematographers." The kinoks wanted to "replace verbal debate, as

18626-538: Was kept under police surveillance; he was nevertheless able to correspond with other revolutionaries, many of whom visited him, and permitted to go on trips to swim in the Yenisei River and to hunt duck and snipe . In May 1898, Nadya joined him in exile, having been arrested in August 1896 for organising a strike. She was initially posted to Ufa , but persuaded the authorities to move her to Shushenskoye, where she and Lenin married on 10 July 1898. Settling into

18765-735: Was on the verge of proletarian revolution. The party began plans to organise the offensive, holding a final meeting at the Smolny Institute on 24 October. This was the base of the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), an armed militia largely loyal to the Bolsheviks that had been established by the Petrograd Soviet during Kornilov's alleged coup. In October, the MRC was ordered to take control of Petrograd's key transport, communication, printing and utilities hubs, and did so without bloodshed. Bolsheviks besieged

18904-522: Was the third of eight children, having two older siblings, Anna (born 1864) and Alexander (born 1866). They were followed by three more children, Olga (born 1871), Dmitry (born 1874), and Maria (born 1878). Two later siblings died in infancy. His father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov , was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although his mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank),

19043-485: Was unable to take such a leading role on the Iskra editorial board; in his absence, the board moved its base of operations to Geneva . The second RSDLP Congress was held in London in July 1903. At the conference, a schism emerged between Lenin's supporters and those of Julius Martov . Martov argued that party members should be able to express themselves independently of the party leadership; Lenin disagreed, emphasising

19182-543: Was with Lenin at the time, shielded him and was injured by a bullet. Concerned by Petrograd's vulnerability to German attack, Sovnarkom began relocating to Moscow in March 1918. Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders moved into the Kremlin . He survived another assassination attempt in August 1918. To All Workers, Soldiers and Peasants. The Soviet authority will at once propose a democratic peace to all nations and an immediate armistice on all fronts. It will safeguard

19321-439: Was worried that the film would be either destroyed or ignored by the public. Upon the official release of Man with a Movie Camera , Vertov issued a statement at the beginning of the film, which read: The film Man with a Movie Camera represents AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC COMMUNICATION Of visual phenomena WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES (a film without intertitles) WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCENARIO (a film without

#333666