All language subtitles for Royal History_s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley 3of3 Russian Revolution.srt - ave(2)

Royal history is at the heart
of the stories we tell

about the past.

We often think it's definitive.

Kings and queens, dates and facts,

all unchanging and fixed.

But it's not like that at all.

History is a cacophony of voices,
all of them competing

to tell their own version
of the story.

And when revolution is in the air...

...that competition
gets really intense.

In this series,
I'm investigating the fibs

about three royal houses
fighting for survival.

Did Marie Antoinette really
cause the French Revolution?

"Let them eat cake!"

Was Georgian Britain as genteel
and well-ordered as we think?

GUNFIRE

And this time, the tragic end of
a powerful dynasty - the Romanovs,

and the real Russian Revolution.

"Down with hunger!

"Down with the war!

"Down with the Tsar!"

It was one of the defining events
of the 20th century

but this story is rich
with fabrications,

with manipulations,

and with some
quite fantastic fibs.

Was Lenin really the leader
of the revolution?

Did false rumours about the Tsarina
and the mad monk Rasputin

help bring down
the Russian monarchy?

And how did the Bolsheviks
rewrite the story

of the October Revolution?

There have been more fibs told
about the history of Russia

than about the history
of any country in the world.

Russia's revolution
of October 1917

has gone down in history
as an inspiring uprising,

getting rid of the cruel
royal family,

giving power to the people,
sweeping away inequality,

transforming Russia forever.

Or...so the story goes.

October 1917.

The First World War raged.

The future of Europe's monarchies
hung in the balance.

And in St Petersburg,
the historic capital of Russia,

a revolution was shaking the world.

We all think we know what happened.

Hordes of revolutionary workers
and soldiers

stormed the Winter Palace.

The Tsar was swept away
and a new communist regime was born.

The October Revolution promised
a future of equality

and prosperity for all.

Russia would never be the same again

and neither would the rest
of the world.

The first socialist revolution

would transform politics
and society.

This day in October 1917

would be remembered forever.

Films and books present
the event as truly epic

but the story of the great
October Revolution

has been exaggerated, glamorised,

and shrouded in fibs.

It established Lenin as the heroic
revolutionary leader.

And this was the foundation stone
of a powerful mythology

that would sustain the Soviet
leaders in power for 74 years.

It's a mythology that still
to this day

masks just how and when
the Russian Revolution got started.

The revolution was fuelled
by growing hatred

of the Romanov dynasty,
that had ruled for 300 years.

As Tsar, Nicholas ll
was head of the powerful

Russian Orthodox Church.

He was also notorious
for the bloody suppression

of protests that even hinted
at democracy.

Nicholas' wife was Alexandra,

a German princess who converted
to the Russian Orthodox Church

when she married him.

The new Tsarina never really
fitted in to the Russian court.

She was always distrusted
as a foreigner.

And this got worse when Russia
went to war with Germany.

In 1914, the royal families of
Europe were all closely related.

Britain's George V was first cousin
to both the Tsar of Russia

and the Kaiser of Germany.

In photos, George and Nicholas
look almost like twins.

But all these close ties
across Europe

would count for...pfff...nothing
when it came to the First World War.

In the fight against the Kaiser,
his German cousin,

the Tsar, allied Russia
with Britain and France.

GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

But by the end of 1916,
the Russian army was collapsing.

Over a million soldiers
had been killed.

Many deserted from the front and
were causing unrest in the cities.

As commander in chief, the Tsar was
blamed for the military disasters.

REPORTER: At the front, defeat,

disorganisation and lonely dead.

Anti-tsarist feeling
was driven further

by an infamous character
of the time.

Grigori Rasputin.

He was adviser to the Tsar
and Tsarina,

but gossip about the Tsarina
and Rasputin

set the royal family up
for a monumental fall.

He's gone down in history
as the sex-crazed mad monk.

For a start, Rasputin
wasn't a proper monk.

He portrayed himself as a mystic

but he'd never officially
been in holy orders.

And then there were the rumours
that the sex-mad monk

was having an affair with Alexandra.

The gossip that Rasputin
was the queen's lover

was spread by Russian radicals
to undermine the monarchy.

It's still doing the rounds
in popular culture.

# Ra- Ra- Rasputin

# Lover of the Russian queen

# There was a cat that
really was gone

# Ra- Ra- Rasputin

# Russia's greatest
love machine... #

Historian Frances Welch is keen
to separate fact from fiction.

Now, Frances, you strongly believe
that Alexandra and Rasputin

weren't having an affair.

Where did these rumours
come from, in that case?

The central problem was that
Rasputin was going to the palace,

visiting the palace, quite a lot.

Nobody knew why, and the reason
was that the Tsarina's son, Alexei,

had haemophilia,
but somehow Rasputin was able

to calm the boy down
and bring about some cure.

The Tsarina didn't want
anyone to know

that Alexei was ill.

The public could not be told,
and they couldn't explain

why Rasputin would keep
coming to the palace.

There were cartoons everywhere,

showing her misbehaving
with Rasputin.

Everyone seemed to think
it was happening.

Why do you believe that
in fact they weren't?

Well, I think she wasn't
because she was so proper,

really profoundly proper.

Sort of haughty, stand-offish.

And the idea of her, sort of,
fraternising in that way

with Rasputin, I can't imagine.

She was also incredibly in love
with her husband.

She wrote, sort of, love letters
to him the whole time.

They had a wonderfully loving
relationship

and I don't believe that the Tsarina
ever slept with Rasputin.

By 1917, the royal family
was seen as the root

of all that was wrong with Russia.

The hunger, the poverty,
the casualties on the front,

and their dependence
on the sex-mad monk

had been an easy target for those
hoping to trigger a revolution.

And in the end,
you had these cartoons

with a sort of grotesque picture,
a giant Rasputin,

with the Tsar on one knee and
the Tsarina on the other knee.

The caption was,
"Russia's ruling house."

# Oh, those Russians. #

The Russian Revolution
began in February 1917,

when workers in St Petersburg
started rioting

about bread shortages.

They also blamed the Tsar
for the continuation

of the disastrous war.

We tend to think of the revolution
as being masterminded

by Vladimir Lenin, the radical
leader of the Bolsheviks,

but that's not what happened.

It wasn't the Bolsheviks
who started the February uprising.

It wasn't even men.

Key to the whole revolution
was a group of female workers.

Thursday the 23rd of February
1917

was International Women's Day.

At noon, crowds of textile workers
began marching

in to the centre of St Petersburg
to make their voices heard.

"Down with hunger!

"Down with the war!

"Down with the Tsar!"

They went from factory to factory.

They were banging on the gates and
throwing snowballs at the windows,

trying to get the men
to come out to join them.

They needed to persuade the men that
this wasn't just another bread riot.

This was different.

And they were successful.
By the end of the day,

the protesters numbered
100,000 people.

What started as a local
women's strike

was turning into a revolution.

The next day,
200,000 workers joined in,

armed with knives, with hammers,
and iron bars.

By the third day,
red flags appeared.

The Tsar ordered the army
to suppress the rioters.

But the women were a step ahead.

A few clays earlier, the female tram
workers had gone to the barracks

to talk to the soldiers
about the strike

and they got them to agree
that when the moment came,

they'd hold their fire.

This is exactly what happened.

Even the mighty Cossack troops
put down their arms.

This was such an important moment.

One of the women, Alexandra
Rodionova, later said that,

"All at once, the unknown future
became real."

Katy Turton has studied
the role of women

in starting the February Revolution.

How was it reported
in the newspapers?

Well, they sing their praises,
in fact.

"Glory to Women" features
several times as a slogan.

And really interestingly,
they talk about women in Moscow,

in many cases deciding the fate
of the battles on the street.

They are the ones who go out
to the soldiers and say,

"Don't fire on our demonstrators.
We're all on the same side."

And, fundamentally,
the women are central

to the soldiers themselves mutinying

and not shooting down
and dispersing the demonstrators.

What happened to accounts
of February as time went by?

Male participants in the revolution
turn historian

and begin to write their own memoirs
about what had happened.

We've got a really interesting
memoir by Nikolai Sukhanov,

who is very dismissive of women's
involvement in the revolution.

He's sitting in his office
listening to women typists saying,

"Do you know, if you ask me, it's
the beginning of the revolution."

And his response is that
these girls didn't understand

what a revolution was, and goes on
to talk about them as philistines.

The typists were actually
completely right - they called it.

Yeah, they were spot on.
Absolutely.

What were the official
Bolshevik leaders doing then?

They weren't anywhere to be found.

Lenin was in Switzerland,
Trotsky was in America,

and Stalin was in exile in Siberia,

so, in fact, the Bolshevik Party
consisted of local activists

who were on site and they, in fact,
were highly disapproving

of the women going out
on International Women's Day

and actually told the women
not to demonstrate. Amazing.

So these women went out
onto the streets

in the teeth of the instructions
of the Bolsheviks?

Yes, it was entirely
their own decisions.

GUNFIRE

The women had ignited
the revolution,

but it wasn't long before
men took charge.

Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer,
would soon be leading

the revolutionary
Provisional Government

while waiting for Russia's
first democratic elections.

Kerensky was less radical
than Lenin

but he was committed
to a more equal society.

And in this new Russia,
there was no room for the Tsar.

In early March 1917,

just a week after the women
had first taken to the streets,

the Tsar's own generals warned him
that if he didn't abdicate,

Russia would collapse into anarchy.

The Tsar wrote in his diary -

"l agreed.

"All around is treason
and cowardice and deceit."

REPORTER:

The monarchy had been swept away
with no involvement from Lenin.

Now, one of the most
extraordinary episodes

of the revolution would unfold,

and a pivotal role
was played in it by...

...the King of Great Britain.

It's a story full of cover-ups

and lies.

The Russian Provisional Government
wanted the Tsar and his family

to leave the country.

The British Ambassador,
Sir George Buchanan,

was asked if they could
seek safety in Britain.

The British government agreed,
and on the 23rd of March,

made an offer of asylum.

What George V felt about
his cousin coming to Britain

was hushed up for over 60 years,
to protect the King's reputation.

Historian Helen Rappaport

has investigated
what really happened.

Whoa.

What's this letter, then,
from Windsor Castle in 1917,

what does this say about the offer?

Britain's offer of asylum
to the Romanovs was never

formally withdrawn, but nor was
a rescue plan put into action.

Thanks in part to Britain's
diplomatic betrayal,

the Russian royal family
remained trapped in Russia.

And Lenin was still
nowhere to be seen.

Lenin had dedicated
his life to Marxism

and to making revolutionary plans
for Russia.

He was also on the run
from the Tsar's secret police.

In February 1917,
he was living in exile in Zurich.

Lenin covertly enlisted German help

in a scramble to get back to Russia.

The Germans had their own motives
for getting involved.

If Lenin returned, he might help
pull Russia out of the war.

A special train was arranged
for Lenin, his wife

and 30 fellow revolutionaries.

The carriage would be defined
as Russian territory

and nobody allowed on or off.

This was to ensure that Lenin
avoided any contact

with the Germans, otherwise
he might be branded a traitor.

It's gone down in history
as Lenin's sealed train.

Lenin said goodbye to a friend
out the window.

"In three months...", he said,

"..either we'll be swinging from
the gallows or we'll be in power."

The train travelled from Zurich
to the Swiss border with Germany.

Here, they transferred
to another train,

for the controversial part
of the journey -

right through enemy territory.

But did this sealed train
live up to its name?

Now, this sealed train
wasn't all that well sealed.

The Russian zone was only demarcated
by a chalk line on the floor

and they left one of
the carriage doors unlocked,

which meant that the revolutionaries
could pop on and off.

At Frankfurt, one of them went to
get some newspapers and some beer.

And in north Germany,
Lenin himself got off

to spend a more comfortable night
at a hotel.

Soviet historians would always
exaggerate the level of security

on Lenin's sealed train,
to protect his reputation.

From a port in northern Germany,
they took the ferry to Sweden...

...and then another train
across Sweden and Finland.

Next stop, St Petersburg.

During his journey, Lenin started
to think about the importance

of his own appearance as propaganda.

He took off his rather
bourgeois-looking homburg hat

and he replaced it with the cap
of a proletarian worker.

Now he looks much more like
a proper revolutionary.

TRAIN WHISTLES

The train reached the Finland
Station in St Petersburg

on the 3rd of April 1917.

A month after the removal
of the Tsar.

According to later accounts
and films by the Bolsheviks,

Lenin arrived to a hero's welcome.

But this didn't tell the full story.

Lenin immediately launched
into a scathing attack

not on the Tsar,
but on his fellow Bolsheviks.

He was furious they'd collaborated
with the Provisional Government.

Some Bolsheviks thought Lenin
too radical.

A few even believed him deranged.

Opinions that were all
quietly glossed over

once Lenin came to power in October.

And there was another reason that
Lenin's return was controversial.

His enemies - Kerensky,
the tsarists -

put it about that because Lenin
had had German help

getting back to Russia,
perhaps he was a German spy

who'd taken German gold
to bring Russia down.

Some people even said that Lenin was
a German army officer in disguise.

All these fibs were used
to discredit Lenin.

He was soon on the run again, this
time from Kerensky's secret police.

He fled St Petersburg.

In October, to launch his coup
against Kerensky,

Lenin would need yet more
subterfuge.

To get back to Bolshevik
headquarters in St Petersburg,

there was only one thing
for it - a disguise.

He put on a wig and scruffy clothes,
he wrapped his head in bandages,

he put his cap on top, and then
he set off into the dark streets.

But government troops spotted him.

If Lenin were arrested now, his
plans for a coup would be over.

But Lenin's disguise
worked really well.

The two soldiers checked him out
in his get-up

and they thought, well,
he's just a harmless drunk.

And they sent him on his way.

The Bolsheviks had taken over
a former school for young ladies,

called the Smolny Institute.

Here, Lenin joined the other
top Bolsheviks,

Stalin and Trotsky.

They all agreed with Lenin that they
must replace Kerensky's government.

While they were making their
preparations for their coup

against the Provisional Government,
Lenin and his comrades

had a meeting to discuss what
they were going to call themselves

when they were in power.

Ministers, they thought,
sounded a bit weak.

But then Trotsky came up
with a suggestion

of the people's commissars.

"Yes", said Lenin.
"That's brilliant.

"That smells of revolution."

Because they'd missed
the one in February,

they were determined that their own
revolution should be perfect.

It had to look right,
it had to sound right,

it even had to smell right.

Good work, comrades.

On the 25th of October 1917,

Lenin and the Bolsheviks mobilised

to snatch power from Kerensky.

This has become one of the most
mythologised moments

in 20th-century history.

And the February triumph would be
swept under the historical carpet.

The Bolshevik version of events
was preserved in a film

made ten years later,
by director Sergei Eisenstein.

Called October 1917,

it featured his characteristic
super-quick cutting.

Some shots lasting no longer
than a single frame.

In Eisenstein's hands,
film had the power

to make fibs seem like
revolutionary truth.

The film's got so much energy
and drama to it

that you think, yes, this must
really capture the passion

they must have felt in October 1917,

and it's become, I think, the most
powerful image of the revolution.

The film demolishes the women's
triumph of February

by depicting it as the work
of the corrupt middle classes,

and pious bishops
in league with the Tsar.

The message was clear.

The February Revolution was bogus.

It had only resulted in the useless
bourgeois Provisional Government,

not a proper workers' revolution
at all.

The Provisional Government
was based in the Winter Palace -

a former royal residence.

The film shows Kerensky
strutting around

in the Tsar's old apartments,
attended by footmen.

The climax of the film is the night
of Lenin's Bolshevik coup.

You get to see the storming
of the Winter Palace,

the toppling of the government...

...and the triumph of the people,
here they come,

led by the Bolsheviks.
Whoa, in they go!

Here are the opulent
palace interiors.

Then, outside, the hungry masses,
and I mean masses. It's epic.

Eisenstein placed an advert
for 60,000 extras.

There he goes, over the railings.

"Forward!", he's shouting.
"Forward! In we go!"

Then rushing up the stairs.

GUNFIRE

Guns are going off.

Bang. You're dead.

Watching it unfold, St Petersburg
appears to be a cauldron

of violent insurrection.

But this was propaganda.

Christopher Read has studied
the real story on the streets.

Can you give me a quick rundown
about what happened

on the 24th and the 25th
of October 1917?

I suppose the simple answer
is to say, nothing very much.

The actual events were very confined
to a very small part of Russia.

Lenin appears in the middle
of all this

and they decided it's time
to think about seizing power,

and they proclaim the seizure
of power.

But, as eyewitnesses said,
the trams never stopped running.

Ha! One person at the time said,
"Well, the Bolsheviks didn't seize power.

"They found it lying in the street
and picked it up."

They sort of realised, well,
we've proclaimed Soviet power,

but we haven't actually
arrested the government.

They're still there.

And Kerensky, the Prime Minister,
had taken advantage of that

to leave the city.

But there was no real storming
of the Winter Palace

because they surrounded it and there
was not really very much defence.

There was a bit of argy-bargy
between the defenders

and the outside... Not armed. just
an argument more than anything else.

One of the doors was open,
people were going in and out,

a detachment went in,
they found the government,

they arrested them and took
them off to the fortress.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks
were determined to turn

this minor skirmish into the most
dramatic moment of the revolution.

Chris, how did the Bolsheviks
differentiate

their October Revolution
from the February one?

The February Revolution
was not their revolution.

The February Revolution was the bourgeois
revolution, so it wasn't their deal.

Once they'd actually seized power
in October,

the February Revolution
became completely irrelevant.

October, that was the revolution
that really mattered -

the one that should be remembered.

That little business in February,

that wasn't a proper revolution,
that was just, sort of, a taster.

Lenin's Bolshevik coup
was now established

as the real revolution.

It promised a future shaped
by peace, by plenty,

and Marxist ideals.

Lenin's doctrines rejected
both religion

and the Romanovs.

Churches were destroyed...

...and the Tsar and his family
remained under house arrest.

But the Tsar was a figurehead
for die-hard royalists,

and by 1918, a violent civil war
had erupted

between the Reds,
that's the Bolsheviks,

and the counter-revolutionaries,
known as the Whites.

This was the first civil war
in which tanks were used.

Trotsky led the Red Army
really well.

He modernised it, he motivated it.

But the civil war was made more
intense by foreign intervention.

Japan, America, Britain -

they all sent help to
the White Russian Army.

Trotsky's Red Army fought back.

They controlled the heart of Russia
and held the key cities

of St Petersburg and Moscow.

The various White armies were

around the borders of Russia,

coming in from the north,

from Eastern Europe,

the south, and even from Siberia.

Winston Churchill,
the British War Minister,

sent support to the Whites
to fight the Reds.

He said he wanted to strangle
Bolshevism in the cradle.

The British ended up
sending 6,000 troops

and 8O tanks to Russia.

To put that in perspective,
Germany in World War I

only had seven tanks altogether.

The fighting in Russia wasn't
confined to the battlefield.

It was also a propaganda war

full of exaggeration
and downright lies.

Bolshevik trains
crisscrossed the country,

spreading THEIR version
of the revolution.

Strong pictorial messages
were essential

because so many peasants
were illiterate.

Art historian Natalia Sidlina

is an expert
on Bolshevik propaganda.

You take a train, you paint the
carriages in the bright colours,

you put the posters on them
and propaganda messages,

the slogans and banners,

you put the little cinema
in one of the carriages,

maybe a doctor in another one,

a specialist in agriculture
in the third one,

and you win people through
this positive message,

through drawing them in and
showing them that the new power

and the new government
is all about them.

It's brilliant. So, if this fancy
train stops at your local station

and you could get health care
and you get agricultural advice,

and a cinema show, you're actually
being brainwashed. Absolutely.

What's going on in this poster here?
What's the big red triangle?

It's a brilliant example of the
usage of a modernist language

for propaganda.

So, we have the red wedge,
which is the Red Army,

which attacked floppy, soft,
white, static force,

represented by this
circular form here.

So this is the Red Army
of the revolutionaries

and this is the White Army of
the old Russians, the tsarists,

the opposition to the revolution?
Absolutely.

Red Army really consolidated
one message, one government,

and you can see, it's penetrating,
it's dynamic, it's winning.

But cool modernist posters concealed
the chaotic brutality of this war.

Prisoners on both sides
were executed out of hand.

Lenin came to power promising
that the death penalty

of the tsarist era
would never return.

But nothing could be further
from the truth.

Lenin's secret police, the Cheka,
executed tens of thousands

more Russians than the Tsar's
secret police had ever done.

They would denounce members of the
opposition as enemies of the people.

Enemy of the people number one
was the Tsar.

He'd now been moved to the city
of Yekaterinburg with his family.

Their prison was ominously called
the House for Special Purposes.

By July 1918, White forces
were closing in on Yekaterinburg

to rescue the Tsar and his family.

The Bolsheviks decided to act.

Nicholas had no idea that he and
his family's lives were in danger.

The last entry in his diary reads -

"The weather is fine and warm.

"We've had absolutely
no news from outside."

Three clays on, very late on
the night of the 16th ofjuly,

the Tsar and his family were taken
down to the basement of the house.

What took place next, would be
shrouded in lies for over 70 years.

The head guard, Yakov Yurovsky,
left an account of what happened.

The royal family were told
that a truck had come

to take them on the next leg
of their journey.

This was half true - a truck
had come to take them away,

but only after they'd been killed.

First to be shot was Nicholas,
at point-blank range.

When the bullets reached his wife,
Alexandra,

she was in the process of making
the sign of the cross.

These two died instantly.

Not so with the children.

Here, the guns were
somehow ineffective,

and they had to turn to bayonets
to finish the job.

The gruesome work
took 20 whole minutes.

Officially, it was the local
Soviets' decision

to execute the royal family,
not Lenin's.

But Helen Rappaport is sceptical.

Helen, what's the evidence
that Lenin was involved

in this decision
to kill the Romanovs?

It's quite clever.
The telegram doesn't say,

"We're going to kill them."

It says, "We're going to do
what we agreed earlier."

The next day, the Soviet authorities
released a statement to the press

that Nicholas Romanov
had been executed.

But the telegram continued
with a lie.

Depending on your point of view,
the execution of the Romanov family

was either a spiteful act
by a group of thugs,

or it was a political necessity
for the success of the revolution.

But Lenin really needed to cover
it up because if news got out

about the slaughter of innocent
children, it would instantly

attract international condemnation.

The bodies of the Romanovs
were buried in a nearby forest.

The lies told about the royal family
led to a lingering belief

that the youngest daughter,
Anastasia, had somehow survived.

If the princess were alive,
then she'd become the last hope

for a restoration of
the Romanov of dynasty.

The true fate of Anastasia
would remain a mystery for decades.

The Reds won the civil war in 1922.

But Lenin didn't have long
to enjoy the triumph.

Within a few months,
he'd suffered three strokes.

And in January 1924, Lenin died.

To maintain order,

the Bolsheviks had to demonstrate
a seamless transition of power.

In fact, it was anything but.

Now, the official line on Lenin's
death is that Stalin

was his anointed heir.

This isn't true at all.

In fact, it's a whopping fib!

And we can prove this
from an impeccable source.

Lenin himself.

Before he died, Lenin dictated
his concerns about the future

of Russia to his secretary.

These documents are known
as Lenin's Testament.

When he knew that he was
about to die,

he decided to warn
his comrades about Stalin.

"Comrade Stalin," Lenin says,
"having become Secretary General,

"has unlimited authority
concentrated in his hands.

"And I am not sure whether he will
always be capable of using

"that authority
with sufficient caution.

"L suggest," Lenin says,
"that the comrades think

"about removing Stalin
and appointing another man."

That's not exactly
a ringing endorsement, is it?

I think we'd better bury these.

Lenin's Testament was hidden away
in a top-secret vault.

To gain power, Stalin spread
the word that he was Lenin's choice.

And to secure it,
he began turning Lenin

into a Bolshevik secular saint.

GUNS FIRE

And what better way than
by embalming Lenin's body

and exhibiting it for posterity
in a mausoleum in Red Square?

This idea of putting her husband's
dead body on display

horrified Lenin's widow.

She wrote that it filled her
with terrible indignation.

They should have buried him
with his comrades.

Now, this inconvenient letter
had to be added to the government

file marked "Completely Secret",
and locked away.

This file's getting quite fat now,
isn't it?

With Stalin as chief pallbearer,

the carefully stage-managed funeral
went like clockwork.

After the funeral, one of the
senior communists said,

"Lenin is dead, Leninism lives."

Lenin had achieved immortality.

He'd become an idea, and Stalin's
creation of this cult of Lenin

worked really well for him.

It helped him see off his rivals,
like Trotsky,

and it helped him gain total control
of the Soviet Union.

STATE ANTHEM OF
THE SOVIET UNION IS SUNG

Stalin built on the Bolshevik
falsification of the history

of the revolution to bolster
his own grip on power.

Natalia Sidlina has studied
how he did this.

What's going on in this picture
of Lenin arriving

at the Finland Station in order to
kick off the triumph of Bolshevism?

This particular painting was
created 20 years after the event.

He has his iconic cap in one hand.

Yes. And behind him is
Joseph Stalin.

Now, that didn't happen.

It's like Stalin has retrospectively
photobombed Lenin's arrival

at the Finland Station.

Stalin is in every single

historically significant
moment.

And if that moment didn't exist,
there's always the painting.

And whoever creates the picture

is the person who makes history.

No image, no history.

Paintings are easy enough
to fake, but surely photographs

were more of a challenge back then?

Here we have probably one
of the most famous photographs

of Lenin, he's addressing troops

about to depart for the front
during the civil war.

You can see he's mid-flow, isn't he?

Absolutely. He's making a speech.

And waiting for their turn
are two very important politicians

of the post-Revolutionary Russia,

Lenin's number two, Leon Trotsky,

and then behind him is Kamenev.

And then we look at
the photograph which appeared

in the press during the Stalin time.

And can you spot
the difference there?

It's pretty obvious Trotsky
has disappeared!

And Kamenev is not there either.
As well! Yes.

So, that's brilliant work
of the photographers

who did the airbrushing of
the images on an industrial scale.

Nowadays, we take image manipulation
for granted,

but we still often fall for it.

Even in the 1920s, though, Stalin
could make anyone disappear,

or even pop up magically as a fellow
comrade in Red Square.

During Stalin time,

the glorification of Lenin
began in earnest.

And some of the historical
photographs of important speeches

by Lenin, as far as Stalin
was concerned,

were not impressive enough.

So, in some of them,
larger crowds would be added.

Stalin now wielded more power
than even the tsars.

In 1928, he announced
the collectivisation of farms.

No more landowners.
Instead, farms and their produce

would be shared by all.

It would be a disaster...

...but many Western radicals
believed Stalin's fibs

about his latest triumph,
and came to see it in action.

They came from all over!

There was HG Wells, the writer,

Arthur Koestler, the philosopher,

Beatrice and Sidney Webb, who set
up the Fabian Society,

and George Bernard Shaw.

He was a big fan of
the revolution in general,

and of Stalin in particular.

The Russian Revolution became
a kind of touch point

for all kinds of left-wing
intellectuals.

George Bernard Shaw
and others in the 1930s,

they wanted to believe that there's
a new, rational kind of society

being built in accordance with
kind of Enlightenment principles

of reason and organisation, rather
than the madness of the market

and capitalism, and so on.

And did Stalin
welcome these visitors?

They were always very pleased
to kind of show off

their achievements and to show
how successful they claimed to be.

When George Bernard Shaw visited
Russia, he was quick to accept

Stalin's proud boasts
about his new policies.

"Hunger, in Russia?" asked Shaw,
"Nonsense!

"L've never been fed as well
anywhere, as I was in Moscow."

But Shaw had been taken in.

He'd been sent on these excursions
to see happy, well-fed farmers.

But while he was being wined
and dined in Moscow, in fact,

a devastating famine was killing
peasants in Ukraine

and other parts of the Soviet Union.

Stalin tried to cover up the famine
caused by collectivisation,

but some in the West
saw through his lies.

Journalist and author
George Orwell was one of them.

This is Manor Farm in Hertfordshire.
It's the place that partly inspired

George Orwell's story, Animal Farm.

He lived just down the road,
and he once spoke about an event

that had triggered the idea.
He'd seen a little boy

driving a huge cart horse down
a narrow path by whipping it.

And Orwell said - if only such
animals knew their strength,

we would have no power over them.

Men exploit animals much
in the same way as the rich

exploit the proletariat.

Orwell described his story
as a fairy story.

It's a satire, and in it,
the clever pigs

incite all the other animals
on the farm

to rise up against
the cruel, human farmer.

But the pigs get drunk on power

and they end up acting just as badly
as the original farmer had done.

Animal Farm came out in 1945.

In his allegory,
Orwell exposed Stalin

as an enemy of the democratic left.

Even worse than his tsarist
predecessors.

DRAMATIC SCORE

But the United States government
would soon see the story's potential

as a political weapon
in the Cold War.

In the early '50s, the CIA secretly
bought the rights to turn

Animal Farm into an animated
feature film. They were using it

as anti-communist propaganda.

Comrades, I have made
a terrible discovery!

There are traitors among us.

Orwell's warning about Stalinism
was now harnessed as an argument

against the left in general.

And the line, "Some animals
are more equal than others,"

has been used to brand socialist
leaders as hypocrites ever since.

Many of Stalin's crimes
would remain hidden

from the world for decades.

His terrible excesses glossed over
after his victory against Hitler.

In Russia, he was
celebrated as a hero.

Stalin's death in 1953

marked the end of the first
revolutionary generation.

But in the years that followed,
the memory of the Romanovs

continued to haunt Russia.

In 1979, two amateur detectives,
Alexander Avdonin

and Geli Ryabov came to
a forest near Yekaterinburg.

They had a tip-off about where
the royal bodies might be buried.

Avdonin said that his task
was to restore "one of the pages

"of our history," but he also knew
that this was extremely dangerous.

"If this gets to the KGB," he said,
"it will end very badly for me."

Even so, they started digging.

They found bones
and, pretty soon, three skulls.

One skull had a bullet hole in it.

Another had several gold teeth,
just like the Tsar.

The men contacted scientists
in Moscow to confirm their find,

but no-one would dare touch it.

This was Soviet Russia in the 1970s.

People were terrified of the
authorities. Avdonin said,

"We could have been sent to prison,

"we could even have just
been disappeared."

The Soviet regime had been
covering up this business

since the very first year
of the revolution.

So, they lost their nerve.

They went back to the forest
and they reburied the skulls.

History would have to wait
a little bit longer

for the truth to be revealed.

But not as long as
the two men feared.

In the 1980s,

Mikhail Gorbachev attempted
to reform the Soviet Union

with a new spirit of openness.

But by challenging the fibs
of the past, Gorbachev unleashed

an unstoppable force that swept
Soviet power away altogether.

On Christmas Day 1991, the red flag
above the Kremlin was lowered

for the last time,

to be replaced by the
old Russian imperial colours.

Russia was now
a democratic republic.

74 years of Bolshevik rule
were over.

The Russian Orthodox Church
flourished once more.

A cathedral was built

on the site of the Romanov
executions in Yekaterinburg.

Over the years, Bolshevik lies
about the fate of the Tsar's family

had allowed the story of Anastasia's
survival to flourish.

Books and films were made about
the heir to the Romanov throne,

who'd supposedly
made it to the West.

Several women even claimed
to be Anastasia.

In 1991, the bones in the woods
were dug up again and later

analysed by scientists.

The DNA tests confirmed
that the bodies were the Russian

royal family, and from their number,

it was clear that Anastasia
was among them.

She hadn't escaped the murders,
after all.

The celebrated myth of Anastasia
could finally be put to rest.

In the year 2000,

the Russian church declared the
Russian royal family to be saints.

In Vladimir Putin's new Russia,
tens of thousands go on marches

and pilgrimages commemorating
the Romanovs, every year.

Former BBC Moscow correspondent
Martin Sixsmith

has witnessed the extraordinary
rewriting of the story

of the revolution.

The Tsar and the tsarist dynasties,
the Romanovs

and those who preceded them,
have made a fantastic and quite

remarkable comeback in
the last 30 years, since 1991.

Under communism, they were the
tyrants who were overthrown

by the force of the people,

the socialist uprising of 1917.

Suddenly, now, they're saints.

They are literally sanctified.

And that's all to do with
Putin co-opting the legacy

of the Romanovs, which was
a strong, centralised Russia.

But it's also to do
with co-opting the power

of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Putin has embraced this new
veneration of the Tsar

and he rejects the legacy
of the October Revolution.

Political commentator
Arkady Ostrovsky has studied

Putin's approach to Soviet history.

The Bolshevik revolution is,

if anything, is a negative
event for him.

It's omitted from the official
Russian calendar.

It's no longer marked
because it's a divisive event.

The fact that the Lenin's mausoleum
is draped off during the parades

in the Red Square actually
speaks volumes

about his attitude to those events.

As an autocrat who built
his legitimacy around the idea

of Russian imperial history,
expansion of territories,

revolutions are not
comfortable events.

And that's the big change from,
of course, the Soviet period,

which was all based on the idea
of the Bolshevik revolution.

And that was the source
of legitimacy of the Soviet rulers

up till and including Gorbachev.

For Putin, it's the idea of the
empire, which is much more important

than the idea of
the communist ideology.

So, suddenly, a revolution
is uncomfortable because it's...

Part of the reason
they're omitting it

is that it raises some
of the very, very similar questions

about Russia's future... ls it time
for another one? Yes.

And, in a sense, that Russia
is battling with the same dilemmas

as it did in 1916,
just before the revolution.

Vladimir Putin is marginalising
Lenin and the Russian Revolution.

He's happy to create
his own narrative

and brush aside unwelcome facts.

It's an art perfected by
the Bolsheviks.

There have been more fibs
told about the history of Russia

than about the history
of any country in the world.

We look at fake news today.

We look at politicians who say
one thing today,

and then, the following day
deny that they'd said it.

But they look like amateurs compared
to the Bolsheviks.

The Bolsheviks rewrote
whole swathes of history,

decades of history, and they rewrote
it in the way that suited them best.

So, they became the heroes.

Everybody else became the villains.

Royal history is always
being written and rewritten

to suit those who are telling it.

For many decades, Russians were told
it was the October Revolution

that saved the nation,
that Lenin was a national hero.

Now he's been sidelined.

As for the Tsar and his family,

well, today in the new Russia,
they are royal martyrs.

And tomorrow, who knows?

Only one thing's for sure -

the future is just as uncertain

as the ever-changing story
of the past.