Dziga Vertov’s film The History of the Civil War has only been screened once before, a century ago in 1921. Vertov, who is now recognized as a pioneer of documentary film making, made this film to record the events of the Russi an Civil War. And while documentary makers today tend to strive for some sort of objectivity, even when they have a clear ‘POV’, Vertov’s is unflinchingly pro-Bolshevik. It would even be fair to call this film an unabashed piece of red propaganda. Because of this, it is a fascinating piece of cinema. We catch several glimpses of Leon Trotsky giving speeches to the troops, portrayals of several heroes of the red side and full-throated denunciations of the white agents of capital.
For those who aren’t up on their Russian history, the TLDR version is that the Russian monarchy was overthrown in 1917. There was a period of political instability and then a civil war between the Bolsheviks, the Red side, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the Whites, who represented a variety of disparate interests. The Red side eventually won and established the Soviet Union.
The History of the Civil War begins with a laundry list of all the terrible things the Whites have done and buildings and bridges they’ve destroyed. Then we move on to watching the Red side exact revenge. The film has no narration. It’s a silent film, so we have cards that explain what’s going on. But the film assumes that you know, for example, what the Czechoslovak legion was up to in the Russian Civil War and who Nestor Makhno was (he led a large peasant uprising in Ukraine and fought against both sides of the civil war). The film is a celebration of the personalities and events of the revolution from the Red side, and is clearly meant to immortalize these figures. They are named, and then pose in front of the camera in heroic poses on the decks of naval vessels.
Looking back at this period of history, as seen by one of its proponents, one of the things that struck me was the nearly obsessive interest Vertov seemed to have with the weapons of this war. Vertov catalogues all the types of armoured cars and tanks that were involved on both sides. He goes into detail about the calibre of gun that each vehicle carried. He goes to great lengths to show the respective effects of 3 inch shells, 6 in shells and 12 in shells. We observe what kinds of holes each of these made in ice. From today’s perspective, none of this is all that interesting. That is until we remember that the Russian Civil War, like the concurrent First World War, was one of the first truly industrial wars. No one on earth had ever seen weapons like these. They would have seemed to come straight out of science fiction. These early tanks, machine guns and modern artillery pieces were grey, frightening pieces of engineering that would come to shatter the widespread belief in progress and the notion of infallible European superiority. But from Vertov’s point of view, these industrial machines, like Bolshevik ideology, pointed to an ultra-modern future. Communist and Marxist theory seemed to rely heavily on the assumption that eventually the machines would be able to relieve mankind of the need to toil endlessly at manual labour. Once the era of capitalism abated, machines and factories like those we spend so much time watching in this film would fulfill their promise of bringing heaven to earth. Even if, in the meantime, mankind has to live through a period of hell on earth.
What is fascinating is the juxtaposition between this implicit view of an industrial communist future and what now seems like an antiquated attachment to notions of chivalry and honour in the armed forces. Great leaders rouse their troops with astounding feats of oratory on a scale that simply does not exist any more. There is a belief in immortality that will be won by those who fight and die for the revolution. Would there have been a place for these notions in the future the Bolsheviks envisioned? And if not, does that indicate a certain misunderstanding of human nature that modern technology was supposed to bring? In any case, The History of the Civil War is an intriguing look at the future as it was seen by those fighting and dying for it a century ago.