On November 7 evening, just shy of a hundred years since the Bolshevik Revolution, viewers of Channel One—Russia’s primary state-run television network—were treated to the premiére of a lavish, big-budget series about Leon Trotsky, one of the main protagonists of the momentous events of October, 1917. In life, Trotsky was a ferociously talented orator and a brilliant organizer, who had grand ideas about the stream of history and his own role in it. The show portrays Trotsky as wielding a charismatic and forceful intellect, and as a man of style and passion, who, with equal alacrity, is able to win over peasant fighters to the Bolshevik cause and women to his embrace—while clad in squishy, head-to-toe black leather. I attended a screening last week, where Konstantin Ernst, the director of Channel One, brimmed with enthusiasm as he introduced the first episode, declaring that Trotsky had the air of a “rock-and-roll star” and could be thought of as the “executive producer” of the 1917 Revolution.
The New Yorker: Putin’s Russia wrestles with the meaning of Trotsky and Revolution
Picture taken in 1917 showing people demonstrating in Moscow during the period of the Russian revolution. During the October 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Kerensky's Provisional Government, formed during the March 1917 Revolution, and replaced it for a soviet one, leading to the establishment of the Soviet Union. The October Revolution was led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, and marked the beginning of the spread of communism in the twentieth century.
