The unforgettable year 1919

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Movie
German title The unforgettable year 1919
Original title Незабываемый 1919 год (Nesabywajemy 1919 god)
Country of production Soviet Union
original language Russian
Publishing year 1951
length 149 minutes
Rod
Director Micheil Tschiaureli
script Vsevolod Vishnevsky , Micheil Tschiaureli, Alexander Filimonow
production Mosfilm
music Dmitri Shostakovich
camera Leonid Kosmatow , Vladimir Nikolayev
occupation

The Unforgettable Year 1919 ( Russian: Незабываемый 1919 год , Nesabywajemy 1919 god ) is a two-act Soviet monumental film by Georgian director Micheil Tschiaureli from 1951 and is based on the play of the same name by Vsevolod Vitalyevich Vishnevsky . The film was the culmination of the Stalin cult and is set on the Northwest Front during the Russian Civil War , where white troops and units of the Royal Navy threaten Kronstadt and Petrograd . The production was dubbed by DEFA , but the German version was only performed in the GDR and not in the Federal Republic of Germany . The film was awarded the Crystal Globe of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

action

May 1919. The Russian Civil War is at its height; the Bolshevik government in Moscow under Lenin is in grave danger. The people in Petrograd are starving and doubt the victory of communism , but the sailor Shibayev and his friend Katja firmly believe in the revolution. A conspiratorial cell has formed in Petrograd, which is the fifth column to overthrow the Lenin government.

Lenin shows his solidarity with the people by working on a construction site where he is hauling heavy beams. Here he receives bad news from northern Russia. The White Army and the Royal Navy, sent to the Baltic Sea by Winston Churchill , threaten to take the Krasnaya Gorka fortress and thus Kronstadt and Petrograd. The Soviet city of Petrograd wants to evacuate. Back in his office, Lenin thinks for a few seconds to whom he can entrust this difficult task of repelling the attack and shouts: " Stalin !"

Stalin drives his armored train through the civil war zone. He is accompanied by cavalry led by Budyonny and Voroshilov . On behalf of Lenin, he goes to the Petrograd Front. There he meets in the stage instead of combat readiness on sloppiness and pleasure seeking. The responsible for the morale of the troops Commissioner enjoys prefer musical performances instead of his duties perceive. When he learns that Stalin is in the theater, he is shocked and is seriously admonished by Stalin.

The situation in the Red Fleet is even worse . Stalin visits a battleship in which there is pure chaos . The sailors are already dismantling equipment. Stalin gathers the crew around him. He explains to them calmly and objectively the seriousness of the situation, referring to Lenin, which makes the sailors thoughtful and made them give in. Back on land, Stalin passes a monument to Peter the Great . He shows his companions the monument and praises the Tsar as a great role model for building a Russian fleet. Since the city soviet still wants to evacuate Petrograd, Stalin has him replaced by soldiers and sailors.

Meanwhile, the white forces gather from outside, while the Fifth Column has taken possession of the Krasnaya Gorka fortress, with Katja being arrested by the whites. The well-known terrorist Savinkov is also involved in this enterprise . But thanks to Stalin, the Red Army and the Red Fleet are well prepared. Unimpressed by the enemy gunfire, Stalin stands smoking a pipe on a stepping stone of the armored train and drives towards the enemy.

The Royal Navy is defeated in a massive sea ​​battle , which is personally led by Stalin as admiral on land. Meanwhile, Schybayev Krasnaya Gorka is retaken and Katja and other prisoners are freed. The invasion of the Petrograd Front failed and with it the partition of the Ukrainian People's Republic , which is already being planned in London by Western politicians like Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson . Churchill can only deliver the bad news of the defeat.

After the victory, Shibayev and Katja can finally get married. Surprisingly, Stalin appears at the wedding and congratulates the young couple. Everyone is drinking to Lenin, whose importance Stalin once again underlines.

After his return to Moscow, Stalin received a high order from Kalinin and Lenin in the Kremlin . The film fades out with Stalin's armored train driving out into the Russian expanse at full steam.

criticism

"... a masterpiece of socialist realism ..."

- New Germany

“… Young Stalin stands in a well-ironed, white silk-lined rider's coat on the Feldherrnhügel, repudiates the commissioner who, instead of keeping lists properly, has arranged colorful evenings, and chases away the city soviet, who petty-mindedly had Petersburg evacuated. Conspirators and spies achieved the deserved bullet. The greed of predation in the English camp, driven by a very similar Churchill, degenerated into a grotesque dance. Only runs in the east zone ... "

- The mirror

Prop

Nuremberg 1946a
Oktyabr'skayaRevolyutsiya1934

Various units of the Soviet Navy served as props for the sea battle. The British flagship was the cruiser Admiral Makarow , the former Nuremberg of the German Navy , which had been handed over to the USSR in 1946 as a reparation payment. A Gangut-class battleship played the most important role . The scene in which Stalin exhorts the sailors to obey Lenin's orders also takes place on this ship. Although the units of the Gangut class served in the Red Workers 'and Peasants' Fleet in 1919, they had been completely changed on the outside due to renovations in the 1930s, but were still in active service at the time of shooting.

Historical background of the film plot

Both the "sea battle" and Stalin's function as "admiral" are fictitious. In fact, on the night of June 18, 1919, speedboats of the Royal Navy attacked Red Fleet units in Kronstadt, which included the cruiser Oleg , among others . Stalin had never been on the northern front during the civil war and had no influence on naval operations. His trips with the armored train are based on Leon Trotsky , who as People's Commissar for Defense commanded the Red Army from such a train .

Presumably Stalin's role in Tsaritsyn was transferred here in 1918, where he allegedly stabilized the southern front, which Georgi Vasiljew had already discussed in the 1942 film The Defense of Tsaritsyn . Stalin's role as "Admiral" and the reference to the maritime endeavors of Peter the Great on the occasion of the visit to the monument are an indication of the actual propaganda aim of the film: the construction of a modern ocean-going fleet. In terms of content, the film is therefore in the context of ships storm bastions and sails in the storm , both of which were realized by Michail Romm in 1953 and also dubbed by DEFA.

Lore

The complete film version was edited on DVD in Russia in 2006 . The German dubbed version may be in the film archive of the Federal Archives in Berlin ; the length of the German version is unknown.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Germany , September 20, 1952
  2. ↑ New in Germany . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1952 ( online ).