The International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the Socialist Equality Party will be screening the classic documentary of the Russian Revolution, Tsar to Lenin, Tuesday April 4 at Wayne State University in Detroit.

According to World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board and SEP chairman David North this film, “bears witness to a moment in history when socialist ideals inspired the greatest revolutionary movement in world history.”

Herman Axelbank painstakingly assembled the extraordinary film footage contained in this documentary in the 1920s. It shows the last days of the Tsar’s empire, the mass uprising of February 1917 that overthrew the 400-year-old autocracy, the October 1917 Bolshevik-led insurrection, and the ensuing bitter civil war, which ended in 1921 with the victory of the new socialist workers’ state. Narrated by Max Eastman, the work premiered in 1937 to critical acclaim in New York, only to fall victim to a campaign of slander and threats by the Stalinists against Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the 1917 Revolution with Lenin.

David North, a leading figure in the Trotskyist movement for more than 40 years, will introduce the film and lead a discussion afterwards.

David North has played a leading role in the international socialist movement for forty-five years, and is presently the chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party (US). His many published works include The Heritage We Defend; The Crisis of American Democracy; In Defense of Leon Trotsky; The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century; and The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left.

Details:
Tuesday April 4, 6:30 pm
Wayne State University
Bernath Auditorium,
Undergraduate Library
5155 Gullen Mall
Detroit, Michigan