(Worldwide, June 6-8PM EST) After discovering this obscure and forgotten Soviet Communist graphic novel last winter, journalist and filmmaker Andie Stewart is pleased to present an animated adaptation for free web premiere on June 6 at 8 PM EST. "It really is a fascinating and unique opportunity to combine distinctly digital methods with these older analog methods of communication in order to examine an entire civilization and what it was saying about itself," said Stewart.
"I first stumbled across this graphic novel last winter and, on its own merits, it has a lot of fascinating nuances. The storytelling is distinctively seeking to not have a centralized heroic figure, obviously an impulse many would imagine perhaps stems from debates about 'cults of personality,'" she said. "But instead I would avoid that level of anti-Sovietism and instead refer to the way the storytelling mimics the works of earlier Soviet silent filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein, who were trying to represent the Bolshevik revolution as a story of classes as opposed to individual heroes. I think there is a much richer seam to be mined when we think in these terms rather than pursuing a lot of old Cold War canards."
Stewart says she takes an anthropological approach rather than desiring to engage with sectarian polemics about what is said in the text. "Look, it is true, these authors did delete Leon Trotsky as founder of the Petrograd Soviet and Red Army from this story while rehabilitating contemporaries like Tukachevsky. But there is something unique about the Soviet Union as an extinct government insofar as one never sees this much passion and anger likewise accorded to the Ottoman Empire. This is an opportunity to learn about a civilization that no longer exists." Stewart hopes that this new kind of animated film will present viewers, learners, and radicals with an opportunity for education and growth.
"I don't believe in a crazy apocalyptic notion where the voluntarist revolution is going to take down the US federal government. We need to seriously look at what was required for the Bolsheviks to take power in the midst of conditions quite like those being created by Elon Musk's DOGE rampage. How and why was it possible for the Bolsheviks to succeed when others failed? This is what the Soviet Communist Party argued was necessary and I urge Comrades to consider that seriously. Regardless of whether or not Trump is or is not a fascist is frankly auxiliary to a much more vital matter of identification, namely, is our side organized?"
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"The Russian Revolution-What Really Happened: A Motion Comic Graphic History" © 2025 by Andie Stewart is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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