''The Storming of the Winter Palace'' was a 1920 mass spectacle, based on historical events that took place in

Petrograd Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

during the 1917

October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mom ...

Taking place on the third anniversary of the revolution, it was directed by Nikolai Evreinov and was subtitled a "mass action." The sets were designed by Yuri Annenkov. The spectacle was staged outside the former Tsarist

Winter Palace The Winter Palace ( rus, Зимний дворец, Zimnij dvorets, p=ˈzʲimnʲɪj dvɐˈrʲɛts) is a palace in Saint Petersburg that served as the official residence of the Russian Emperor from 1732 to 1917. The palace and its precincts now ...

where the

Provisional Government A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, or a transitional government, is an emergency governmental authority set up to manage a political transition generally in the cases of a newly formed state or ...

was meeting at the time of the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

revolution. Its performers included 125 ballet dancers, 100 circus people, 1,750 supernumeraries and students, 200 women, 260 secondary actors, and 150 assistants. There were also tanks and armoured cars involved. The mass spectacle form took the pre-revolutionary

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

utopias of "ritual theatre" (whose formulation was largely a response to the abortive

1905 revolution The Russian Revolution of 1905,. also known as the First Russian Revolution,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...

), and recast their "people" as the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...

. Performed on 7 November before 100,000 spectators, the action begins with the

February Revolution The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and some ...

, follows the gradual organization of the workers (on a red stage to the left, with Kerensky and the Provisional Government on a white stage to the right), until they are illuminated fully by searchlights, and crying "

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

, Lenin" charge over the arch which joins the two stages to do battle with the "Whites." Kerensky leaps to a car for an escape, and is pursued along a path between the two large groups of spectators by trucks full of the Red Guard waving bayonets, to the Palace. Silhouettes struggle in the windows of the Palace, until the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

is finally successful, and red lights flash out. A cannon fired from the cruiser ''

Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...

'' and fireworks herald the victory of the October Revolution.

Influence

Evreinov's dramatic creation was extremely influential in the commemoration of the deposition of the Provisional Government, which in reality took place at night and was much less dramatic than depicted either in Evreinov's spectacle or in

Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...

's feature film '' October: Ten Days That Shook the World'' (1927). One of the over 100 surviving photographs from the spectacle, pictured above, was presented from 1922 on in many Soviet and also foreign publications as an authentic image from the events of 1917. For this purpose, the picture was heavily

retouched Photograph manipulation involves the transformation or alteration of a photograph using various methods and techniques to achieve desired results. Some photograph manipulations are considered to be skillful artwork, while others are consider ...

, with the spectators on the right and a tower-like construction for directing the participants removed.Sylvia Sasse: Retusche=Attacke. Oder: Wie Geschichte durch Theater repariert wurde. ''Kulturstiftung des Bundes. Das Magazin #28. 2017/2.
/ref> The image is sometimes also misinterpreted as a

film still A film still (sometimes called a publicity still or a production still) is a photograph, taken on or off the set of a Film, movie or television program during Film production, production. These photographs are also taken in formal studio settings ...

from ''October'', though the "storming" in the film is set (historically correctly) at night, not during the day as in the photograph.

References

Sources

* Kleberg, Lars. 1980. ''Theatre as Action: Soviet Russian Avant-Garde Aesthetics''. Trans. Charles Rougle. New Directions in Theatre ser. London: Macmillan, 1993. . * von Geldern, James. 1993. ''Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920.'' Berkeley: U of California P.
Available online here
{{DEFAULTSORT:Storming of the Winter Palace Modernist theatre Theatre in Russia Culture in Saint Petersburg Works about the Russian Revolution 1920s in Leningrad