December 21, 2025 marked one hundred years since the ceremonial premiere of Sergei Eisenstein’s film «Battleship Potemkin», shown at the Bolshoi Theatre during an event for the anniversary of the 1905 Revolution. The picture, now regarded as a world cinema classic, was at the same time created as a direct Soviet propaganda commission.
The anniversary commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee originally expected a large-scale film about the events of 1905, including the Russo-Japanese War, Bloody Sunday, and the December uprising in Moscow. But after the script was approved on June 4, 1925, it became clear that such a project could not be finished by December, and Eisenstein focused on the mutiny aboard the battleship Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky, which unfolded from June 14 to June 25, 1905.
Filming took place in Odesa. The original Potemkin was already being dismantled for scrap, so the production used the battleship Twelve Apostles and the cruiser Komintern. Eisenstein reduced the story to several key episodes: the mutiny over rotten meat, Vakulenchuk’s death, the farewell to him, the massacre on the steps, and the meeting between the ship and the squadron.
The article stresses that the film follows a clear ideological scheme: the early epigraph used a quotation from Trotsky, later replaced with words by Lenin; sailors are portrayed sympathetically, while officers and the ship’s priest appear as caricatures. At the same time, the famous Odesa Steps sequence, which became the film’s center, was entirely invented by Eisenstein rather than drawn from a real event.
That section is what secured the film’s place in cinema history. Working with cinematographer Eduard Tisse, Eisenstein introduced new technical solutions, and the episode became a model of editing craft. It was later echoed by Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Quentin Tarantino, and other directors.
The author argues that despite its propagandistic nature, the film remains relevant as a statement about state violence against civilians. The article connects that theme to contemporary Russian events, including protest crackdowns, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, and the war against Ukraine.