Strike by Sergei Eisenstein

Strike was Sergei Eisenstein's first film (1924). It depicts life at a factory complex in Tsarist Russia and the conditions the workforce experienced. The plot is about the workers organising a strike which due to repression escalates into a full blown occupation. Its most famous scenes like Battleship Potemkin where the violent measures used by the Tsarist authorities.

Acting mainly involved members of the First Workers Prolecult theatre an experimental movement in the Soviet Unions early years that attempted to replace the importance of plot with the power of performance aided by special effects. Sergei Eisenstein was a member of the Prolecult theatre before moving onto film and incorporated most of that style into his films.

Contains both Russian and English inter titles.

Go to Archive.org for more details and download links.



As this was Eisensteins first film and made during the Soviet Unions early years it suffered the least from the Soviet censors. The obligatory opening quote by Lenin is rather benign and generic relating to the importance of workers organisation, rather then a justification of the Bolsheviks actions.

 The Strength of the working class is organization. Without organization of the masses, the proletariat is nothing, organized it is everything. Being organized means unity of action, the unity of practical activity.

Lenin- 1907