Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema

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Dziga Vertov’s directorial debut Anniversary of the

Revolution

Nikolai Izvolov

To cite this article: Nikolai Izvolov (2019) Dziga Vertov’s directorial debut Anniversary
of�the�Revolution, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 13:1, 2-17, DOI:
10.1080/17503132.2019.1540224

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2019.1540224

Published online: 08 Nov 2018.

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STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA
2019, VOL. 13, NO. 1, 2–17
https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2019.1540224

ARTICLE

Dziga Vertov’s directorial debut Anniversary of the Revolution

Nikolai Izvolov
Department of Russian Film History, Scientific Research Institute for Film Art (NIIK), Moscow, Russia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Anniversary of the Revolution (Godovshchina revoliutsii, 1918) was Dziga Vertov; Anniversary of
the first directorial and editorial experience of Dziga Vertov. For the Revolution; compilation
many years the film was considered lost and has not been the film; reconstruction; archival
footage; Russian State
focus of researchers’ attention. In 1967, Viktor Listov attributed
Documentary Film and
some parts of this gigantic compilation film, which consisted of Photo Archive (RGAKFD)
historical chronicles of the events in Russia from 1917 to 1918. In
2017, the complete list of intertitles for the film was discovered at
the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), which has
enabled the author of this article to identify all the film’s consti-
tuent parts and recover the film in full from the material archived
at the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive
(RGAKFD). On that basis, it has been possible to reconstruct
Dziga Vertov’s debut film, which will fundamentally expand the
research field around his cinematic heritage. The history of the
film’s reconstruction stands as the focus of this article.

In 1918, Dziga Vertov submitted his first ‘industrial exam’, as he would later say (Vertov
2008, 320). His debut work was a full-length documentary, an enormous compilation
film of some 3000 metres, completed for the first anniversary of the October Revolution
in early November 1918. The premiere took place on 7 November, exactly a year after
the October Revolution in Petrograd. The film was titled Anniversary of the Revolution
(Godovshchina revoliutsii).
From today’s perspective, the film’s destiny was stunning, though quite typical for the
time. In those days, films were released in a small print number and would instantly
become a collector’s rarity, as it were. Right after the premiere, which took place in
several cities of Soviet Russia simultaneously,1 Anniversary of the Revolution practically
disappeared from circulation. The positive prints (copies) were subjected to wear and
tear, and many were lost. It is true that some copies continued to circulate and toured
the country a few years later with the agit-trains, but ultimately they also shared the fate
of the other prints. The film’s negative was repeatedly used for producing other news-
reels and chopped into small pieces. Such was the usual practice in those days.
The few rare mentions in the press did not give film scholars enough material for a
detailed understanding of this mysterious film. Vertov’s archive (RGALI 2091) contains no
written or photographic materials relating to the film. Film histories mentioned it in
passing, in subordinate clauses, modestly referring only to the title.

CONTACT Nikolai Izvolov izvolov@mail.ru Scientific Research Institute for Film Art (NIIK), Moscow
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA 3

All that was known was that it was an edited film made from assembled footage: a
compilation film. Unfortunately, materials pertaining to the first years of Soviet power
were sketchy and sources were not always fully attributed; they were often mixed up,
fragments from one film were stuck on to another, and without an exact description of
Anniversary of the Revolution it was impossible to identify the film’s fragments from
among the huge quantity of archival footage and newsreels.
In 1969, the first – and until today the most serious – scholarly work on this
mysterious film by Vertov appeared in the form of an article by Viktor Listov, entitled
‘Dziga Vertov’s First Film’ (Listov 1969). It was published not in a specialised film journal,
but in the annual almanac Prometei, aimed above all at a youth audience and therefore
not within the immediate field of vision of the contemporary researcher.
This text told a fascinating story, which unostentatiously wove together quite aca-
demic arguments, but also connected scholarly methods of archival research with a
detective investigation. Applying various rather inventive methods, Listov managed to
identify some reels of this film that were contained in the collection of the Central State
Archive of Film and Photo Documents (TsGAKFD, since 1992 the Russian State
Documentary Film and Photo Archive, RGAKFD).
Based on the archival materials and publications in the press of those years, Listov
assumed that the newsreel material previously considered part of Grigorii Boltianskii’s
film October Overturn (Oktiabr′skii perevorot, 1917), but furnished with intertitles written
in the new Soviet orthography that had been adopted in 1918 and bearing traces (like
birthmarks) of mistakes made by the typesetters of these titles, was the fragment of a
film that could have been made by Dziga Vertov, namely Anniversary of the Revolution.2
Listov also investigated other reels. Two of them3 were quite convincingly identified,
while others were identified on presumptions. Encouraged by his findings, he wrote that
the full identification and reconstruction of this film was a matter of the not-too-distant
future (Listov 1969, 135).
Convinced that there must be more material pertaining to this lost compilation film by
Dziga Vertov at RGAKFD, researchers had to wait only for the moment when the list of topics
(items, intertitles) or the editing script would be found. And here, just before the centenary
of the October Revolution, in the summer of 2017, the film scholar Svetlana Ishevskaya
discovered the full text of the film’s intertitles in the form of an official, printed poster
announcing the film’s premiere in the fond of Vladimir Mayakovsky at the Russian State
Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). In November 2017, a conference entitled ‘October’s
Unfading Image’ (‘Nemerknushchii obraz Oktiabria’) was held at the State Film Institute
(VGIK) in Moscow; at a plenary session this discovery was announced to the wider research
field and introduced to the broader scientific community. During the session, the presenters,
Nikolai Izvolov and Svetlana Ishevskaya, had the idea of uniting their research efforts and
reconstructing, at long last, Vertov’s debut film.
Back in 1969, Listov knew that other researchers also paid attention to some frag-
ments of unknown films stored in TsGAKFD, which obviously also belonged to the same
volumetric screen work from 1918. Listov himself wrote at the end of his article: ‘When
the proofs of this article came back to the author, Liudmila Shirokova, a researcher at the
Central Archive of Film- and Photo Documents, had managed to find and put in order
the episodes of the film about February in Petrograd, about the State Conference and
other events of 1917’ (Listov 1969, 135).
4 N. IZVOLOV

He writes that Shirokova managed to find and order several episodes of the film
about events that certainly could have been part of Vertov’s film, but he makes no
assertion that these episodes were an identified and proven part of it. Time passed, and
a few years later Listov’s book, History Looks in the Lens (1974), included a chapter about
Anniversary of the Revolution, which in many respects repeats the earlier text published
in the almanac Prometei, but – besides a repetition of the argument about the identi-
fication of the three reels from Vertov’s film – says no more about Shirokova’s work. The
research once again came to a halt.
There is no doubt that Listov’s arguments used for the presumed attribution of
fragments from Anniversary of the Revolution are quite convincing. But the incontestable
proof that they belong to Vertov’s film lies solely in the textual concurrence of the
intertitles in the film with the titles written in the editing script, a document produced
after the final assembly. Indeed, this is what Listov also acknowledged in his article: ‘If
only we could find a detailed description of the first Vertov film, we could – if not
reconstruct Anniversary of the Revolution, then at least imagine its content’ (Listov
1969, 129).
If researchers in 1967–1968 had had the full list of intertitles to this film, then the
question of identification could have been solved earlier. But until the summer of 2017,
the list of the titles remained in obscurity, and only once this ‘artefact’ was found did it
become possible not only to imagine the content but also – at least so we believe –
practically completely reconstruct the film.
In order to bring to light the fragments of Anniversary of the Revolution stored in
RGAKFD, the method of continuous viewing has been used. Since the intertitles and full
list of events are now known, those newsreels were called up from storage based on the
catalogue of RGAKFD in Krasnogorsk that could potentially concern the events shown in
the film. In addition, the content of some nine or ten film tins had to be identified; three
tins (inventory numbers 113071, 12572 and 12893) had already been reliably identified
by Listov. Having determined the fragments concerning the October Revolution in
Petrograd, Listov also attributed to Anniversary of the Revolution a well-known reel
that was catalogued in the archive as a separate film with the title ‘The Brain of Soviet
Russia’. Indeed, almost all the parts of Vertov’s film had their own titles, and therefore
they could also have been shown as independent films.
Despite the ingenuity of Listov’s arguments, some observations are questionable
from the perspective of today’s research. For example, in RGAKFD there are two films
with the title ‘The Brain of Soviet Russia’. One was part of Vertov’s film; it is a rather long
reel of 317 metres catalogued under inventory number 12893. The second, stored under
number 12913, represents a later version, significantly shorter in comparison with
the original first version. In this film, which is dated no earlier than spring 1920, all
the figures of the Soviet government are introduced by their new job titles, while the
intertitles basically follow the content of the earlier version. For example, the title from
the original version, ‘Chairman of the Soviet Peace Delegation on Ukrainian negotiations,
member of the Central Executive Committee, Comrade Rakovskii’, has, in the shorter
variant, the word ‘Soviet’ (sovetskii) obviously mistakenly replaced by ‘Council’ (sovet); an
update was added to Rakovskii’s job title for the post he took up in spring 1920:
‘nowadays Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine’. Furthermore,
in the original version we read: ‘Chairman of the Extraordinary Commission on Army
 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA 5

Equipment, member of the Central Executive Committee, Comrade Krasin’. The revised
version is updated as: ‘Now People’s Commissar of Foreign Trade and Chairman of the
Soviet Trade Delegation in London’. Leonid Krasin took up this post at the beginning of
spring 1920, and the concurrence of these two dates in 1920 makes it possible to define
the production date of this second version quite accurately. In addition, in the film’s
credits we find the mark ‘T-vo A.D.’, belonging to the distribution office Don-Otello in
Irkutsk. This circumstance also makes it possible to ascertain the distribution area of
Vertov’s film, which was obviously not limited to the European part of Russia.
While the modified (second) version of this film has been cut (and may well not be
preserved in full), there are several figures of the Soviet government missing, for
example Vladimir Lenin. Therefore, the modern reader gets the impression that Listov,
speaking about ‘The Brain of Soviet Russia’, correctly specifies the archival number of the
film, but describes a different film (Listov 1969, 134). Listov debates why there is no
Lenin, what frames with Lenin there could have been, and astutely assumes that there
must have been footage of October 1918, Lenin’s walk across the Kremlin with Vladimir
Bonch-Bruyevich – and that is correct: in reel # 12893 all this is present. The reason for
Listov’s difficulties is not clear. Perhaps 50 years ago the archival catalogue was arranged
otherwise, or its structure was different, or the editing script was incomplete, or two
different reels may have been stored under the same archival number. In any case,
Listov obviously describes a reel made after 1918, which actually consists of footage also
used by Vertov and fragments of the original intertitles from Anniversary of the
Revolution, but which is in itself not a fragment of Anniversary of the Revolution, as we
can establish precisely with the text of the original intertitles.
So, Listov found, and presumably identified with a sufficient degree of persuasiveness,
one reel from Vertov’s film: the reel with the topic ‘October Revolution in Petrograd’, archival
number 13071, which he convincingly singled out from Boltianskii’s October Overturn. He
also correctly identified as part of Vertov’s film the reels about the State Conference in
Moscow in the summer of 1917 (archival number 12933-II).
His observations are as follows: (a) the footage concerns 1917; (b) the spelling of the
intertitles dates from 1918; and (c) the events are obviously treated from a Bolshevik
perspective. But here the method of attribution, consisting of three crossover lines of
observation, is insufficient. As a matter of fact, the filming of the State Conference in
Moscow in August 1917 is part of some other large Soviet film about this event, which
Vertov used in his own monumental work. But there are also other parts of this film,
which Vertov did not use in Anniversary of the Revolution, and – if we apply Listov’s
methodology – these parts could also be presumed to belong to Vertov’s film; that,
however, would be a mistake. For example, in the list of intertitles for Anniversary of the
Revolution, we read: ‘At the meeting a block of members of the State Duma in its four
convocations has been organized’, and this intertitle is actually present in the film. But in
the archive there is another reel with the same archival number (12933-I) where the
same event is shown with a similar intertitle, but even more ‘Bolshevik’ in tone, that is
critically directed against the participants of the conference: ‘At the meeting a block of
representatives from the members of the State Duma in its four convocations has been
organized, forming a bouquet of fanatics of the liberal bourgeoisie’. Indeed, this inter-
title does not belong to Vertov’s film, so the argument about ‘Bolshevik intertitles’ in
Vertov’s film – despite its persuasiveness – is alone not sufficient.
6 N. IZVOLOV

We know that the film Anniversary of the Revolution was quite long. We do not know
exactly of how many parts it consisted, but obviously there would have been 12–14
parts, as emerges from Listov’s book (1974, 178) and from data quoted by Vertov
himself.4 But the parameter of ‘parts’ also involves uncertainty, because at that time
there was no standardisation that would suggest one part equals one film reel, which
usually has a length of about 300 metres. In those days, ‘parts’ were more likely a
dramaturgic concept, and the length of a film contained in a single tin could vary from
150 to 300 (and more) metres. Accordingly, the quantity of tins could also vary, and one
dramaturgic part could come in two tins. Therefore, the quantity of parts and the
quantity of tins does not always match, and even if we were to find exact data, as for
example in Listov’s book – the inventory of films on the agit-train of 1921, where 11
parts of Anniversary of the Revolution are listed and the overall length is 3545 metres –
we cannot definitely say how many metres the film actually totalled. We do not know
how accurate these lists were and to what extent the length of those parts, i.e. separate
tins counted by the storekeeper of the agit-train, coincided with Vertov’s original film. It
is quite possible that some parts of the film had already suffered loss, and likewise the
storekeeper could have entered extra tins on the document. Therefore, even the docu-
ment from the State Archive of the Russian Federation (TsGAOR), which Listov cited
(1969), does not give us absolute certainty. Thus, the general length of the film could be
– and almost certainly was – variable.
This researcher’s task, then, consisted in watching, armed with the list of intertitles, all
the films with events that concern the anniversary of the Revolution: the February
Revolution in Petrograd and Moscow, the summer of 1917, Provisional Government,
the State Conference in Moscow, the October Revolution in Moscow and Petrograd,
liquidation of the Constituent Assembly, the Brest peace, the Civil War at the
Czechoslovak front, the summer of 1918 in Kazan, Saratov and Khvalynsk, and finally
the labour communes that were being formed in 1918. Dozens of reels had to be viewed
and compared to the list of intertitles. Fortunately, many fragments could be identified
quite easily. It was most difficult to identify the events of the war of 1918 and the
footage of the labour communes, but these reels were in a very good technical condi-
tion. For some reason they were used little, though the chronicle material is well known
through other films. However, nobody ever compiled all these parts in the way Vertov’s
film did, and thus the work on the identification was not only and not so much labour-
intensive, as it demanded attention to detail and careful checking of a long list of
archival numbers. As a result of this work, large chunks or blocks of fragments from
Vertov’s film could be identified. They were usually catalogued in the archive under
conditional archival names, and the dates also were conditional. Thus, the plot ‘Labour
Communes’ was classed in the archive’s card index not as 1918 but as 1925.
As a result of the archival research, the following registration numbers have been
identified as fully matching the list of the dramaturgic parts and intertitles on the 1918
poster:

Revolution in Petrograd, # 12962

Revolution in Moscow, # 11549
Provisional Government, # 12837
Kerensky’s Government (continuation # 12837), # 12572 (specified in Listov 1969)
 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA 7

State Conference, # 12933-II

October Revolution in Petrograd, # 13071 (specified in Listov 1969)
October–November Revolution in Moscow, # 12722
The First Decrees, # 13045-II
Opening and Liquidation of the Constituent Assembly, # 12521
The Brest Peace, # 11755, # 553, # 549, # 12807
The Brain of Soviet Russia, # 12893 (specified in Listov 1969)
The Czechoslovak Front, # 12799-I-II-III (including Part I: Kazan and Part II: Saratov,
Khvalynsk, Nikolaevsk-Ural)
Labour Communes, # 11920

The total length of these reels, considering possible fragments from newsreels, reaches
approximately 3000–3100 metres.
During the viewing of the archival footage and its verification against the editing
sheets, another interesting circumstance was discovered. In the editing sheets for item #
12962, which was created by Shirokova on 14 December 1967, we see not only an entirely
preserved fragment of Vertov’s film, but also the header credit: ‘Anniversary of the
Revolution. Part 1: February–October’ (see Figure 1). The archivist notes: ‘There is an
assumption that the second part of this film is the footage on item # 11549, and the
third part # 12837’. Although it is clear which film is being referred to, and the large font of
the header leaves no doubt about the title and the mark of the Film Committee of the
People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment (Kinokomitet Narkomprosa), there is no further
identification of this film as belonging to Dziga Vertov in any way. The archivist, assuming
that several parts belong to the same film, makes a perspicacious observation – following
most naturally the serial numbers of the intertitles, the design of the credits, the events in
this film, their sequence, and the characteristic display of old orthography alongside the

Figure 1. Header credit for Anniversary of the Revolution.

8 N. IZVOLOV

new spelling (when the typesetters still from time to time continue to write the credits
along the old rules by mistake) – the same observation made by Viktor Listov.
In the archive’s electronic catalogue, the film is conditionally titled ‘Anniversary of the
February Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution in Petrograd’. Surprisingly, 50 years after
Listov’s article and Shirokova’s archival notes, the exact title of the film has still not
been entered into the catalogue. This circumstance has further delayed the detection
and identification of Anniversary of the Revolution. Indeed, on the majority of other
discovered fragments, the label ‘chapter’ or ‘section’ is missing. This obviously happened
because the beginnings and ends of film reels were most exposed to wear and tear.
When they were received in an archive, therefore, films were often given conditional
titles, sometimes based on the first available intertitle. In the preserved pieces of
Anniversary of the Revolution only four original names of separate ‘parts’ or internal
‘films’ were preserved: the film title ‘Anniversary of the Revolution’, ‘October-November
Revolution in Moscow’, ‘Opening and Liquidation of the Constituent Assembly’ and ‘The
Brain of Soviet Russia’.
The archivist Shirokova noted – and we should pay attention to this circumstance –
the bad photographic quality of the material in the first part of the film; and that is
despite the fact that Shirokova was handling the original positive on nitrate film, partly
toned. In the editing sheets of another part (and in Listov’s article, 1969) we find
clarification: the intertitles of this film were toned in red. Since the intertitles, specially
made for the film and printed at the same time, are in quite good condition, the bad
quality of the images in this part of the film speaks to the fact that Vertov dealt with
duped material, which by the time it was used for Anniversary of the Revolution was
already in a far-from-ideal technical condition. We see on the film traces of repeated
duping and several layers of traces from the perforation of different films.
Thus, when the film reached the screens, many fragments concerning 1917 were in a
far-from-ideal photographic condition. However, all the footage filmed after the begin-
ning of 1918, shot in the year when the film was completed – the episodes ‘Kazan’ and
‘Labour Communes’ – are of good quality; obviously this is no dupe, unlike the materials
from 1917. It is possible that the positive for these episodes was printed from an original
negative, since the material from 1918 was shot by cameramen from the Film
Committee. This circumstance has to be taken into account when considering the
restoration (reconstruction) of the film. Of course, we can improve the technical quality
if we find the original footage for some frames in a different source. Then we can simply
print it again from the negative and insert it into the film. But this decision would be a
historical lie, because Vertov showed the film in another, uneven, technical quality. So
what should we do? Improve Vertov? Or restore the film in the way, frequently techni-
cally imperfect, in which it was made and shown in 1918? This is a serious issue, which
arises frequently in restoration of early films. Up to now, the question has not been
resolved by researchers; however, we should not digress here.
Combing successively through the dozen tins with newsreels from that time, we have
come across film fragments which, in comparison with the original list of intertitles,
definitely belong to Anniversary of the Revolution. Obviously, the film was made under
difficult technical conditions, and it is certainly not known how many copies were
printed. But we know, for example, from Boltianskii’s memoirs, that at that time impor-
tant films were released in four to five copies, while some especially important ones,
 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA 9

including Anniversary of the Revolution, had up to 40 copies printed (Boltianskii 1959, 99).
Boltianskii’s article is quoted by other authors, and it is clear that the top limit of 40
copies is naturally attributed to Vertov’s film. Vertov himself describes in an article from
1940, entitled ‘From the History of the Newsreel’, how he ‘passed his first industrial
exam’ when he was a very young man and had been working in cinema for less than
half a year; he speaks of the fact that he simultaneously worked with 30 editors, as if
playing simultaneous chess games (Vertov 2008, 320). (Elsewhere he talks of 50 copies,
while the number of editors is fewer, namely 25; Vertov 2008, 164.)
Vertov had to constantly remember a huge quantity of editable frames, separately
make intertitles, recall their sequence and other details. He had to remember simulta-
neously 242 topics (or items), on 30 separate platforms – a phenomenal task. We may
make here one textual observation that may explain a lot.
At least 30 editors simultaneously put together 30 positive prints (copies). What
would be the negative of the film, usually in a single copy? Did it exist at all, as
something in its entirety? We know the story of how, in March 1919 when Vladimir
Gardin started to manage the newsreel department at Moscow’s Film Committee
(Moskinokomitet), he made Vertov restore all previous editions of the Cinema-Week
(Kino-Nedelia) made to that date (Gardin 1949, 171–172). But what does it mean, ‘to
restore’? Could they really, within half a year, have been out of use? And then, if positive
copies were sent to cinemas and departed on agit-trains for different parts of the Soviet
Republic, what was there to be restored? And, if one suddenly had to restore the
Cinema-Week, could Anniversary of the Revolution not require restoration in the
same way?
Listov, the tireless Vertov researcher, once quoted a very interesting document
concerning this issue. The Film Committee (Kinokomitet) released a typewritten bulletin
(preserved in TsGAOR), which contains the following note: ‘On 24 March [1919] the head
of department tasked the worker Comrade Vertov with the restoration of the dispersed
newsreels of the Film Committee from a selection of negatives of each issue released.
Comrade Vertov is carrying out the task. According to his account, the newsreel is in an
awful condition, and in the words of the report it is “a Russian salad from negative,
positive, intertitles, clips from dramas and so forth”’ (TsGAOR 2306/21/12, 46; cited in
Listov 1968, 99).
It is strange that Vertov, starting his service at the Film Committee as a clerk
responsible for the receipt and registration of completed films from cameramen, could
admit such chaos in the storage of most valuable materials. However, he had to leave
Moscow with the agit-train and consequently could not always supervise the system of
registration and storage of filmed footage. But there is already a particular logic behind
him being entrusted with this particular task.
Vertov had to deal with a ‘Russian salad’ from the most diverse materials: positives
of edited films, separate pieces of negatives and separately filmed intertitles (which
have, from the outset, no negative). He was entrusted with picking up the negatives
of the Cinema-Week, because the positives of the completed films should not be
cut up.
To bring order to the negatives of that time was most likely quite a tall order.
Cameramen would deliver to the Film Committee the footage they had shot on
negative. These films were pasted together along certain plots, from which positive
10 N. IZVOLOV

prints were then made, and later intertitles would be inserted; these were composed, as
a rule, by the cameramen. The completed film always represented only a positive copy,
while the negative remained in the form of small pieces stuck together according to
plot. Thus, the same negatives could be used for printing positives of separate plots for
the Cinema-Week, and as inserts in other films.
When Vertov restored the issues of the Cinema-Week, he left a note that many
missing negatives of this newsreel could be found in the film Anniversary of the
Revolution.5 This circumstance may explain the discrepancies that we find in the
Cinema-Week issues restored by Vertov; Listov refers to them in his article (Listov 1968,
98). Since Vertov sometimes had to print again titles that were missing, he may have
been mistaken in some cases with the numbering of the titles.
At this point we can ascertain that some fragments of Anniversary of the Revolution
were not preserved as part of the film, but in issues of the Cinema-Week. So, for example,
the ending of the episode ‘The Peace of Brest’ is missing in the film, but it can be found
in various issues of the Cinema-Week. The last four plots are:

8. After the peace treaty, the country quickly turned to peaceful life. In Petrograd
Swedish merchant steamships appeared on the Neva.
9. In masses, Russian invalids returned from captivity.6
10. Exiled from their motherland by the war, the refugees held out in occupied
territories.
11. The demarcation lines were established: the borders of Soviet Russia.

This could mean that, when restoring the Cinema-Week, Vertov returned to their
original place those fragments of the negative that half a year ago he had taken from
issues of the very same Cinema-Week, pulling them now, in turn, from the film. However,
they may also be genuine losses.
A most curious document is stored in Vertov’s fond at RGALI (2091/2/381),7 entitled
‘The Status of Cinema-Week on 5 May 1919’ (‘Polozhenie Kino-Nedeli na 5 maia 1919’).
This document lists the plots for the Cinema-Week used in Anniversary of the Revolution
or its components, such as ‘The Brain of Soviet Russia’. The plots are designated by
numbers, but it is simple to restore their description if we compare the numbering with
the description of plots in the Cinema-Week in the editing sheets.8 According to this
document, the following plots from Cinema-Weeks (without attention to small typos) are
included in Anniversary of the Revolution:

Cinema-Week # 2
1. People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs CHICHERIN.
2. Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs KARAKHAN.
3. Head of the Central European Department RADEK.

Cinema-Week # 3
2. People’s Commissar for Food TSURIUPA.
3. Commissar for Food for the southern regions SHLIAPNIKOV.
 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA 11

11. Vladivostok. Commander of the Counter-revolutionary Forces in Siberia, Admiral

KOLCHAK.
12. Arrival of Russian invalids from German captivity.
13. Landing.
14. Loading of the patients onto ambulances.
15. Bandages sewed from overcoats and gowns, as reprisal to Russian officers of the
10th Corps of the Hanover District.
16. Wooden footwear.

Cinema-Week # 4
1. Commissar on Press Affairs of the Petrograd Commune, Comrade VOLODARSKY.

Cinema-Week # 5
2. Chairman of the Soviet peace delegation in Ukraine, Comrade RAKOVSKY.
10. From Petrograd life.
11. New Swedish steamships on the Neva, and goods for loading.

Cinema-Week # 7
5. Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, Comrade SVERDLOV.
7. Commissar for Post and Telegraphs PODBELSKY.

Cinema-Week # 8
1. Extraordinary Commissar for Food in Siberia, Comrade SHLIKHTER.
2. Editor-in-chief of Izvestiya newspaper of the Central Executive Committee, Iu.M.
Steklov.
3. Member of the Commissariat of Labour, Comrade KHODAROVSKY.

Cinema-Week # 9
1. Member of the Presidium of the re-elected Central Executive Committee of
Izvestiya, Comrade SOSNOVSKY.

Cinema-Week # 12
4. Captured by the White Guards [mistake in the original: the captured White Guard;
N.I.] in Finland, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, Comrade KAMENEV.
5. The District Commissar on Military Affairs, Comrade MURALOV.

Cinema-Week # 17
4. Towards the capture of Kazan.
5. Dispatch of detachments of the Red Army to the front. At Kazan Railway Station.
6. Departure of Comrade TROTSKY.
7. The steam locomotive of Comrade TROTSKY protected by machine guns.
8. The armoured train in action near Kazan.
9. Speech of Comrade TROTSKY to the Red Army.
10. Distribution of literature.
12 N. IZVOLOV

Cinema-Week # 18
6. The Volga flotilla.
7. A naval detachment of communists.
8. Arrival of Comrade TROTSKY in Kazan.
9. Unloading of the artillery.
10. Group of released prisoners, supporters of the Soviet power.

Cinema-Week # 19
6. KAZAN. The corpse of the first sailor killed by a shock battalion.
7. The trophies taken by Soviet troops: 75mm guns.
8. Colt machine guns left by the Czechoslovaks amongst fire wood.
9. Field artillery left behind by the Czechoslovaks and ammunition wagons.
10. Sviyazhsky Bridge near Kazan, of huge strategic value.
11. General view of the city of KAZAN.

Cinema-Week # 20
2. Speech of Comrades Steklov and Afonin.
3. Manoeuvres of reserve units of the Red Army near Moscow.
4. The Commander of All Forces of the Soviet Republic with his staff observes the
course of the manoeuvres.9
5. A map of the military actions on the Czechoslovak front.
6. From 8 September until 6 October Soviet troops take the city of KAZAN.
7. Kazan. Upper Uslon [typo: uklon (bias), instead of the name of this settlement; N.I.],
the strong position of the Czechoslovaks taken by storm.
8. A steamship sunk on the Volga.
9. The burned down pier with engineering impedimenta.

Cinema-Week # 21
5. SARATOV. On the way to the front Comrade TROTSKY visited Saratov.
6. Meeting in the people’s palace.
7. From Saratov the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs has left by steamship for
Khvalynsk, under protection from the ship ‘Saratovets’ and a military vessel.

Cinema-Week # 22
1. Moscow. Vladimir Il’ich LENIN, the Head of the Soviet Government, recovering from
injury.
6. PENZA. Meeting of Comrade TROTSKY with the First Revolutionary Czechoslovak
detachment.

Cinema-Week # 35
10. On the way from Kiev to Odessa the Petliura supporter GUCHKOV is arrested.10

From this list, we may derive the quantity of plots from the Cinema-Week that were used
in Anniversary of the Revolution: there were 51 (if we leave aside the frame with Guchkov
 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA 13

and the three disputable lines from Cinema-Week # 20) of a total of 242 plots, that is an
overall 21% of footage.
Another important observation helps to restore more precisely the most problematic
part of the film devoted to the signing of the Brest peace treaty. Vertov specified in the
document that the plot of this part of the film about the return of Russian prisoners of
war from Germany contains all five montage frames from Cinema-Week # 3 (RGALI 2091/
2/1). Thus, this fragment stands concisely in its place in the restored version of
Anniversary of the Revolution.
When comparing the list of intertitles to the actual intertitles printed on the films,
some fragments of Anniversary of the Revolution have different continuous numbering of
the titles. Thus, the first five episodes of the film – ‘Revolution in Petrograd’, ‘Revolution
in Moscow’, ‘Provisional Government’, ‘Kerensky’s Government’ and ‘State Conference’ –
are numbered consecutively on the poster, from 1 to 74. But within the film the
numbering is different. This may be explained in two ways.
The first is the great length of some titles. They could not be placed in one frame and
consequently were broken into several titles of smaller size with additional letters. Thus,
the first credit in the film received such a numbering:

(1) At the beginning of 1917 the bondage and weight of three years of war and the lack of
foodstuff made the people worry (1a) to a terrifying degree. The shaky government
apparatus, and even more so the dissolute power (1b) couldn’t hold back the popular
masses. [Then the listed number 2 is attached to number 1b on the film]. On 25 February
the riots in Petrograd grew. The people took to the streets.

The second possible explanation lies in the fact that some fragments of Anniversary of
the Revolution already had their own numbering, because they were fragments of other,
earlier completed films.
This hypothesis is supported by another observation. Some independent parts of the
film, such as ‘State Conference’, ‘The Brain of Soviet Russia’ and ‘Czechoslovak Front’ –
being absolutely identical in structure and the numbering of the intertitles to
Anniversary of the Revolution – were preserved in the archive in a much longer version
than the one in which they were used in Anniversary of the Revolution. This means that
Vertov used readily available films and took from them those bits that he needed for
Anniversary of the Revolution. The film, thus, represented a very complex composition of
re-edited footage of newsreels from 1917, supplied with a new author’s text, and large
chunks from films of 1918. It is quite probable that the material of the Cinema-Week,
which had appeared since the summer of 1918, could also have been used for the
editing of the film-giant. But themes of the newsreel do not occur frequently in the
film,11 whereas re-used fragments from films produced by the Skobelev Committee12 in
1917 and Soviet films produced in 1918 are frequent in Vertov’s film.
The example of the film ‘The Czechoslovak Front’ (cameraman Petr Ermolov, three
parts)13 shows that the ending of the third reel has been included in Cinema-Week # 22
(plot ‘Penza’; see Poliakova and Dobrashenko 1965, 23),14 while in Anniversary of the
Revolution, as the list of titles shows, the first two and a half reels were used. That is, the
material of ‘The Czechoslovak Front’ has been spread across two different films rather
than duplicated.
14 N. IZVOLOV

The person who composed the author’s text for the first parts of the film, the
chronicle of 1917, obviously did not possess experience in drawing up film titles;
consequently they turned out too long to fit in the frame. It is possible that this unskilled
person could have been Vertov himself, and the person who printed the titles on the
poster truncated them and supplied them with letters in order not to mix up the
sequence.
However, some researchers believe that Vertov had a co-author, and even supply a
name: Savel′ev. Vertov acknowledged that Savel′ev ‘made the intertitles for some parts’
(Vertov 2008, 164) and calls him a ‘writer’, although Aleksei Ivanovich Savel′ev – who did
work at the Film Committee – is known as a photographer, who left (in addition to other
heritage) a photographic record of the Moscow revolutionary events of 1917. His series
‘Tails’ (‘Khvosty’ – as people then called a queue), received particular attention in the
press.15 He photographed Moscow during the February Revolution and during October.
He had a brother, Vasilii, also a photographer. Were they writers? It is hard to tell, since
we do not know what they may have written. Lev Kuleshov and Aleksandra Khokhlova
remember the Savel′ev brothers exclusively as talented photographers of the Film
Committee: ‘Especially outstanding by their concrete and accurate plots, expressiveness,
model composition and high technical qualities were the photos of the brothers Savel′
ev’ (Kuleshov and Khokhlova 1975, 66). Likewise, the well-known cameraman Aleksandr
Levitskii remembers the brothers only as photographers (Levitskii 1964, 162–163).
So, to what extent has the film Anniversary of the Revolution been preserved in full?
We can summarise some textual observations. All the intertitles in the film are num-
bered. On all edited sequences there are so-called ‘starting numbers’, figures written in
the space between frames on the third frame from the point of pasting. The verification
of these numbers is a convincing proof that almost the entire film has been preserved.
We can observe a full concurrence of the sequence of intertitles in the film with the
sequence of titles on the poster, a precise sequence of numbering of the intertitles
inside each part of the film, and the consecutiveness of the starting numbers inside each
plot.
Moreover, comparing the intertitles on the fragments found in the archive, we
can specify the number of parts of which the film consisted. As we noted above, the
word ‘part’ has two meanings: one refers to the dramaturgic segment, the second to
the reel. We can ascertain that the film consisted of 14 dramaturgic parts on 13
reels.
It is possible to find amusing incidents in the film, which obviously have no relation to
the initial editing. Thus, in the episode ‘Kerensky’s Government’ (# 12572) we find a
frame with Kerensky and some women from a ‘shock battalion’, which belongs to the
fiction film The Storming of the Winter Palace (Vziatie zimnego dvortsa),16 filmed in the
autumn of 1920. And yet it appears in the chronicle of the summer of 1917. We can
explain this amusing anachronism with the agit-train, which included in its programme
Anniversary of the Revolution and travelled around the country until 1921. Therefore, a
frame from a 1920 film could quite easily be on an agit-train and be pasted into the film
during the Civil War; in fact, until 1921 both films could easily have been in the same
film library. It is theoretically possible to assume that such an insert might have been
made by Vertov himself, who spent a lot of time on agit-trains.
 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA 15

The only reel that continues to cause textual questions is the episode about the
signing of the peace of Brest. In all other reels of the film identified so far, the credits
are written in the new Soviet orthography and completely match the text of the titles on
the poster. But in the reels relating to the signing of the peace treaty in Brest in March
1918, the situation is slightly different. We find some titles that entirely coincide with the
list of the intertitles – ‘The building where the truce negotiations were held’; ‘The
Bulgarian delegates: colonel Gantchev, the councillor Dr Anastasov’; ‘General Hoffman
goes to the meeting with the German and Austro-Hungarian representatives’; ‘Signing of
the truce by Prince Leopold of Bavaria’ – but all the titles are written in the old spelling
and with letters of the old Russian alphabet.
We may assume that Vertov acted here in the same way as with other chronicles of
1918: he took ready-made fragments from other films, keeping the original intertitles.
Therefore, the old orthography remains intact, still widely used in March 1918. But why
do the intertitles match only partly? Why are there titles that are absent in Vertov? It is
likely that this is one of the donor films of Anniversary of the Revolution, an original that
has not been re-edited by Vertov. But we cannot prove that now. In the same way, we
cannot prove that Vertov used this reel together with the intertitles in the old ortho-
graphy. But the similarity of the plots and identity of the intertitles clearly points to the
fact that this material was in Vertov’s compilation film.
In an amazing manner, the four final plots of this episode, as noted earlier, are found
in various issues of the Cinema-Week.17 Is this perhaps a result of Vertov’s ‘sorting of
negatives’ of the Cinema-Week? Could he have restored the newsreel chronicles at the
expense of his own film?
Other questions will likely arise during the film’s restoration, but it is already clear that
Anniversary of the Revolution, which has been stored in fragments for some 100 years,
finally begins to come together as a single whole. The work commenced 50 years ago by
Viktor Listov and Liudmila Shirokova is being continued, and we can confidently assume
that before our eyes the film is practically being revived from the ruins.
Translated by Birgit Beumers

Notes
1. Vertov remembered: ‘In a short space of time I have to make a full-length film and send it to
all the parts of the republic by the October anniversary’ (Vertov 2008, 320).
2. Archival inventory number 13071 (episode ‘October Revolution in Petrograd’).
3. Inventory number 12572 (episode ‘Provisional Government’) and 12893 (episode ‘The Brain
of Soviet Russia’, about the first Soviet government).
4. See Listov (1974, 178); the number of parts is between 11 and 13. Vertov in various memoirs
quotes the number of parts in the same range.
5. See Listov (1969, 135). A full list of the topics of the Cinema-Week used in Anniversary of the
Revolution can be found in RGALI 2091/2/381.
6. Under this heading, several frames from Cinema-Week # 3 were pasted together. See RGALI
2091/2/381.
7. The storage item contains materials of Vertov’s work on the weekly chronicle newsreels
Cinema-Week, lists of available and missing plots and lists of cameramen.
8. See RGALI 2091/2/1–6. Copies of the editing sheets for the Cinema-Week are also held in the
Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), which acquired them from Elizaveta Svilova in 1974.
16 N. IZVOLOV

9. It is possible that Vertov is mistaken here. Three of these plots (# 2, 3 and 4) are missing
from the list of intertitles on the film poster and are not found in the preserved fragments of
the film Anniversary of the Revolution.
10. Here is an obvious anachronism. Cinema-Week # 35 was released on 14 February 1919, three
months after the premiere of Anniversary of the Revolution. Possibly Vertov mixed up this
plot with another, where Guchkov, the minister of War and Navy Affairs of the Provisional
Government in 1917, is filmed during the funeral of the victims of the February Revolution.
This plot was in the first part of Anniversary of the Revolution. It is improbable that Guchkov
would be the only character to appear in the film twice. Symon Petliura (1879–1926) was
Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Army and President of the independent Ukrainian
National Republic (1918–1921).
11. See RGALI 2091/2/381. Vertov enumerates 50 items (‘plots’) from the Cinema-Week that
have been used in Anniversary of the Revolution. The film contains a total of 242 plots. Thus,
the majority (some 80%) of Anniversary of the Revolution has no relation to the Cinema-
Week.
12. The Skobolev Committee was organised in St Petersburg in 1904 as a part-state and part-
public charitable organisation to support invalids of the Russo-Japanese War. It was named
after General Mikhail D. Skobelev (1843–1882) by his sister, Nadezhda D. Beloselskaia-
Belozerskaia, with approval of the Tsar. In March 1914, a military-cinematic section was
established, which, until the end of 1916, had a monopoly on filming activities at the front.
The Committee was reorganised after the February Revolution at the initiative of the war
commission of the State Duma and tasked with shooting footage for newsreels. It was
nationalised in March 1918. [B.B.].
13. Preserved at RGAKFD, archival number 12799, catalogued under the title ‘Vziatie Kazani,
Simbirska i Samary Krasnoi Armii’ (‘Capture of Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara by the Red
Army’) (1918), 872 metres.
14. In the preserved copy of this issue of the Cinema-Week the list of topics is much shorter than
in the description (see # 12235 at RGAKFD).
15. See the magazine Iskry 39 (8 October 1917).
16. See Glagoleva et al. (1961, 21). The copy of the film is in RGKAFD #1940.
17. Cinema-Week # 3 (episode of the return of Russian captives) and Cinema-Week # 1 (episode
with the refugees in Orsha), Cinema-Week # 5 (Swedish vessels on the Neva).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Nikolai Izvolov is Head of the Department of Russian Film History at the Scientific Research
Institute for Cinema (NIIK) at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). His publications
include the book Fenomen kino. Istoriia i teoriia [The Cinema Phenomenon. History and Theory]
(2001) and numerous articles on early Russian and Soviet cinema published both in Russia and
abroad. He is particularly renowned for his work in the reconstruction of ‘lost’ films by Aleksandr
Medvedkin, Dziga Vertov, Lev Kuleshov and others. Izvolov is the editor of Ruscico’s ‘Academia’
series of classic Russian films on DVD with scholarly commentaries in Hyperkino format.

References
Boltianskii, G. 1959. “Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia i rozhdenie sovetskogo
kinoiskusstva.” In Iz istorii kino. Materialy i dokumenty. Vol. 2, edited by S. Ginzburg, V.
Kolodiazhnaia, V. Mikhailov, and L. Parfenov, 68–116. Moscow: Akademiia Nauk.
 STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET CINEMA 17

Gardin, V. 1949. Vospominaniia. Vol. 1. Moscow: Goskinoizdat

Glagoleva, I., M. Zak, A. Macheret, L. Parfenov, P. Fionov, and O. Iakubovich, eds. 1961. Sovetskie
Khudozhestvennye Fil’my. Annotirovannyi Katalog. Vol 1: “Nemye Fil’my” (1918–1935). Moscow:
Iskusstvo.
Kuleshov, L., and A. Khokhlova 1975. 50 let v kino. Moscow: Iskusstvo.
Levitskii, A. 1964. Rasskazy o kinematografe. Moscow: Iskusstvo.
Listov, V. 1968. “Dve ‘Kinonedeli’. K sporam o tom, kak rozhdalsia sovetskii dokumental’nyi fil’m.”
Iskusstvo kino 5: 97–104.
Listov, V. 1969. “Pervyi fil’m Dzigi Vertova.” Prometei (Istoriko-biograficheskii almanakh) 7: 127–135.
Listov, V. 1974. Istoriia smotrit v ob′ektiv. Moscow: Iskusstvo.
Poliakov, Iu. and S. Drobashenko, eds. 1965. Sovetskaia Kinokhronika, 1918–1925: Annotirovannyi
Katalog. Vol 1: “Kinozhurnaly.” Moscow: n.p. [Tsentr. gos. arkhiv kinofotodokumentov SSSR].
Vertov, D. 2008. Iz naslediia. Tom 2: Stat’i i vystupleniia. Edited by S. Ishevskaia and D. Kruzhkova.
Moscow: Eisenstein Centre.

Archival Sources
RGALI (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art), fond 2091 (Dziga Vertov); TsGAOR State
Archive of the Russian Federation (formerly Central State Archive of the October Revolution);
RGAKFD Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive. References in the text are by fond
number, inventory (opis') and document number (edinitsa khraneniia) in the text; if applicable,
the sheet number follows after a colon.