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Potemkin
Pre-Dreadnought Battleship

Prince Gregorii Alexandrowitch Potemkin, prince of Taurida and Russian field-marshal, was born in Smolensk, Russia, 1736, and died in Bessarabia, Russia, 16 October 1791. He came of a noble Polish family, entered the Russian army, was distinguished for bravery in the war against the Turks in 1771—2 and was promoted lieutenant-general.

He soon supplanted the brothers Orloff in the favor of the empress Catharine and from 1776 until his death was her acknowledged favorite at position in which he wielded great power. He enlarged the Russian army, built a fleet on the Baltic Sea, annexed the Crimea, founded the cities Kherson, Kertch, Nikolaiev, Sebastopol, etc.. was honored by Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, Joseph H., and other monarchs, and became recognized as an important factor in the politics of Europe.

He was waging a successful war against Turkey at the time of his death. In his private life he was mean and avaricious though loaded with wealth by the empress, and his public life, though eminently successful, showed little indication of high ability as a statesman.

In 1787, Prince Grigory Potemkin, Catherine the Great's longtime prime minister and occasional lover, decided that the recently-annexed Crimea needed a little fixing up in preparation for an official visit by the empress. He is said to have erected a number of false-front buildings along Catherine's travel route so as to create the appearance of a happy and thriving peasant society. Men packed up the fake village and rushed it downstream in preparation for Catherine's next pass. Thus was born the legend of the "Potemkin village." Although modern historians have questioned the truthfulness of this story, the term “Potemkin village” has entered the world's vocabulary.

In Russia, the revolutionary movement of 1905 is often called the "first revolution." A wave of economic and political strikes followed which soon engulfed the whole country. In some provinces the peasants joined in the general movement. In June the sailors on the battleship Potemkin mutinied (the war with Japan was still on). On October 30 [17], in the midst of a general strike, the Tsar's government issued a Manifesto promising essential political reforms: civil liberties; protection of the inviolability of the individual ; freedom of conscience, speech, assembly, and association. A far-reaching amnesty for political prisoners was announced and, as a matter of fact, all political prisoners were set free.

The largest and most influential film studio in Russia, Mosfilm first opened its doors in Moscow in the early 1920s. From historical epics to musicals, and propaganda films, Mosfilm's contributions to film history have been beyond compare. Notable productions include Sergei Bondarchuk's monumental War and Peace, the most expensive film ever made, and Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, depicting the 1905 fight for freedom among the sailors when simmerng discontent in Russia boiled over, arguably the greatest film of all time.

Sergei Eisenstein’s reputation as a filmmaker rests on his eight completed films in a 28-year career, of which his three “revolutionary” films, Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1928) are perhaps the best known. His work in “agit-prop” theatre, developing these practices, foreshadowed the work of Bertolt Brecht, another theorist-practitioner who still has much to say to educators. The term “agit-prop” is a contraction of the two words “agitatsiia” and “propaganda” and was a widespread activity in post-Revolutionary Soviet Russia. It was a means of inculcating and promoting appropriate social class values among the proletariat and was a power means of political education.

Eisenstein applied his theory of montage theory in Battleship Potemkin (1925). In order to create the Odessa Staircase scene, Eisenstein assembled focused and zoomed out viewpoints to elongate the perception of time. These were then sped up or slowed down to generate intensity. Many scenes focused in on the faces of the protagonists, offering an immediate emotional connection to the characters. Some scenes showcase minimal, simple objects to offer metaphor.

In the Odessa Steps Sequence from Battleship Potemkin, soldiers are marching down a seemingly endless flight of steps while firing volleys into a crowd. A separate group of mounted Cossacks charges the crowd at the bottom of the stairs. As a result of this violence, there is an older woman, a young boy with his mother, a male student, and a teenage schoolgirl who are injured. Dramatically punctuating this scene is a mother pushing an infant in a carriage. She falls to the ground and dies as the carriage rolls down the steps amidst the fleeing crowd.