Russian Empire - The Complete Cinematic History

Phase I

1682 - 1725

Peter Builds an Empire

A tsar who worked in Dutch shipyards · the Streltsy broken, the beards cut, the Swedes destroyed at Poltava · St Petersburg raised on a swamp and the empire proclaimed in 1721

MINI Peter the Great (1986) — Maximilian Schell

FILM Russian Ark (2002) — 300 years in one take ⟡

⟡ The 1986 miniseries is the spine of this phase — four parts, from the Streltsy revolt to Peter's death.

⟡ Russian Ark is optional and spans the whole file — save it for last if you prefer.

⚔ Character Spotlight — Peter the Great

Two metres tall, trained as a carpenter, and the only tsar who executed rebels personally. He dragged a landlocked Muscovy into Europe by force and named the result an empire. Maximilian Schell's performance in the 1986 miniseries — adapted from Robert Massie — is still the definitive screen Peter.

Phase II

1725 - 1762

The Age of Palace Revolutions

Six rulers in thirty-seven years, most installed by the guards regiments · a German princess arrives to marry the heir · the coup of 1762 makes her empress

SERIES Ekaterina — Season 1 (2014) — Marina Aleksandrova

FILM The Scarlet Empress (1934) — Dietrich, von Sternberg ⟡

⟡ Ekaterina is the Russian-made account and the most historically careful.

⟡ The Scarlet Empress is a masterpiece of design and almost worthless as history — watch it as expressionism.

Phase III

1762 - 1796

Catherine and the Enlightened Autocrat

Crimea annexed, Poland partitioned, the Hermitage filled · correspondence with Voltaire alongside expanding serfdom · Potemkin as partner in bed and in empire

MINI Catherine the Great (2019) — Helen Mirren, four parts

SERIES Ekaterina — Seasons 2-3 (2014-2023)

SERIES The Great (2020) — satire, not history ⟡

⟡ Mirren's miniseries covers the late reign and Potemkin — start there.

⟡ The Great is deliberately anti-historical. Enjoy it after you know the real sequence.

⚔ Character Spotlight — Catherine II

She had no Romanov blood and no legal claim, took the throne in a bloodless coup against her own husband, and ruled for thirty-four years. The screen keeps choosing between the seductress and the stateswoman; Mirren plays both at once, which is closer to the correspondence she actually left behind.

Phase IV

1773 - 1775

Pugachev and the Cossack Rising

A Don Cossack claims to be the murdered Peter III · serfs, Old Believers and Bashkirs burn the Volga frontier · the largest peasant revolt in Russian history ends on a Moscow scaffold

FILM The Captain's Daughter / Russkiy bunt (2000)

⟡ Adapted from Pushkin — the rising seen from inside a frontier fort.

⟡ This is the cost of Catherine's golden age, and the only drama that shows it.

Phase V

1805 - 1815

Alexander I and the Fall of Napoleon

Austerlitz, Tilsit, then six hundred thousand men crossing the Niemen · Borodino, a burning Moscow and a winter retreat · Russian troops enter Paris in 1814

FILM War and Peace (1966-67) — Bondarchuk, four parts

MINI War & Peace (2016) — BBC, six parts ⟡

⟡ Bondarchuk's Borodino used tens of thousands of real soldiers — nothing since compares.

⟡ Watch alongside napoleon.html for the same campaign from the French side.

Phase VI

1825

The Decembrist Revolt

Officers who saw Europe refuse to swear to Nicholas I · three thousand men stand in Senate Square and are broken by grapeshot · five hang, the rest go to Siberia with their wives behind them

FILM The Captivating Star of Happiness (1975) — Motyl, two parts

⟡ Told through the Decembrists' wives — the finest Soviet film about the imperial nobility.

Phase VII

1825 - 1855

Nicholas I and the Gendarme of Europe

Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality · censorship and the Third Section · and underneath it the greatest generation Russian letters ever produced

FILM Onegin (1999) — Ralph Fiennes, Liv Tyler

⟡ No major drama covers the reign itself — Onegin is the era's texture, not its politics.

Phase VIII

1853 - 1856

The Crimean War

Britain and France defend the Ottomans against Russian expansion · Sevastopol besieged for eleven months · defeat exposes an empire that cannot supply its own army

FILM The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) — British side

⟡ No major drama covers the Russian side — documentary bridge recommended.

⟡ Pair with ottoman.html: this is the same war seen from Constantinople.

Phase IX

1861 - 1894

Emancipation and the Long Reaction

Twenty-three million serfs freed in 1861 · reformers and terrorists in the same generation · Alexander II killed by a bomb in 1881 and the reforms die with him

FILM Anna Karenina (2012) — Wright, Knightley ⟡

⟡ No major drama covers the reforms or the assassination — documentary bridge recommended.

⟡ Anna Karenina is the society this phase produced, not its politics.

Phase X

1894 - 1905

Nicholas II and the First Revolution

A ballerina, then a coronation, then Khodynka · defeat by Japan at Tsushima · Bloody Sunday and the mutinies of 1905 force a parliament out of an autocrat

FILM Matilda (2017) — the Kshesinskaya affair

FILM Battleship Potemkin (1925) — Eisenstein

⟡ Matilda first (1890s), then Potemkin for the mutiny of 1905.

⟡ Potemkin is propaganda made twenty years after the event — powerful, and openly partisan.

Phase XI

1905 - 1916

Rasputin and the Rotting Court

A haemophiliac heir and a Siberian holy man the empress will not give up · ministers appointed and dismissed on his word · murdered in December 1916, three months before the throne falls

FILM Agony (1981) — Klimov, banned for a decade

DRAMA The Last Czars (2019) — six-part docudrama

⟡ Agony is the great film of the late court — hallucinatory, and closer to the record than it looks.

⟡ The Last Czars bridges this phase and the next with historians on camera.

Phase XII

1914 - 1918

War, Abdication and Yekaterinburg

The tsar takes personal command and personal blame · bread riots in February 1917 end three centuries of Romanov rule in a week · the family is shot in a cellar in July 1918

FILM Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) — Schaffner, 1904-1918

FILM Doctor Zhivago (1965) — Lean, war into revolution

FILM Admiral (2008) — Kolchak, 1915-1920 ⟡

⟡ Nicholas and Alexandra is the primary account of the fall — watch it first.

⟡ Admiral carries the story past the empire into the civil war.

⚔ Character Spotlight — Nicholas II

The last emperor, and by every account a devoted family man with no aptitude for the job he inherited. Michael Jayston's 1971 performance is the standard portrayal: not a tyrant, a man who kept choosing the smaller loyalty over the larger one until there was nothing left to rule.