Best movies like They Were the First

The film is about the civil war in the Zangezur (Syunik) province of Armenia in the early 1920s. The last Dashnak battalions headed by Sparapet Nzhdeh still opposed both the incursion of Red Army and the local Bolshevik partisans.

The final part of trilogy about the life of a young factory worker, Maxim. Following the Russian Revolution, Maksim is appointed state commissar in charge of the national bank. With great efforts, he learns the complexies of the banking trade and begins to fight off sabotaging underlings. Dymba, now a violent enemy of the Republic, tries to rob a wine store but is arrested with Maksim's help. Maksim also exposes a conspiracy of a group of tsarist officers who prepare an attempt against Lenin. He then joins the Red Army in its fight against the German occupation.

Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.

An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.

Aerograd is a 1935 Soviet film by Ukrainian director Olexander Dovzhenko, Mosfilm-VUFKU coproduction. It is a futuristic adventure story set in the Soviet Far East. Considered one of two sound masterpieces by Dovzhenko, the other being "Ivan".

A soldier returns to Kyiv after surviving a train crash and encounters clashes between nationalists and collectivists.

A Stalinist assassin tracks exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky to Mexico in 1940.

Vasyl, a member of the Komsomol, with the help of a local party organization, gets a tractor and plows private boundaries "on kulak fields". However, this enthusiasm will cost him dearly.

A peasant in rural Russia comes to St. Petersburg to escape absolute poverty and find work at the outbreak of the First World War. He comes to stay with his friend, a Bolshevik worker who has organized a strike at his factory. The peasant betrays his friend to the factory's greedy management, leading to the arrest of the striker. Feeling remorseful at his actions, the peasant attempts to plead for his friend’s freedom, but the situation escalates and he is imprisoned without trial and sent to fight in the war. After returning from the front, the peasant joins the revolutionary fight along with the Bolshevik worker.

Director Frederick Ermler’s last silent feature and the last of four collaborations with actor Fiodor Nikitin. Nikitin plays an officer who spends a decade after the Great War as a shell-shocked amnesiac, until a glimpse of a woman through a train window sparks the return of his memory. He makes his way back to St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, a man out of time who struggles to make sense of the new society brought about by the revolution.

Girlfriends Zoya, Natasha and Asya live in Petrograd. Before the Civil War, young heroines are aware of the social injustice of life. When the war begins, the girls are recorded by the orderlies of the working group to protect the Bolshevik Petrograd from the advance of the whites.

The setting is Central Asia during the Russian civil war. In the post-revolutionary twenties, when the power in European Russia was (officially) "fully in the hands of the workers and peasants", but the fight against the Basmachi rebels was in full swing. When a Red Army detachment captures Sultan Mazar, the brains behind the Bazmachi contingent, a decision is made to escort urgently the prisoner to the Bukhara province. The difficult mission is entrusted to a grizzled mountain trapper and conscientious revolutionary called Mirzo. His expertise is essential to traverse the precarious paths and steep mountain ridges along the way, impossible terrain for the inexperienced. A group consisting of Mirzo, his brother Kova, the Sultan, his daughter Zaranghis and slave Saifulla set off on this journey. They are forced to fight on the mountain ridges as well as negotiate the natural dangers and harsh elements.

Directed by Edvin Laine and Viktor Tregubovich, Trust (1976) is a Finnish-Soviet historical drama film that follows the relations between Finland and the Soviet Union. In December 1917, the Finnish delegation, composed of Chairman of the Senate Finance Department P.E. Svinhufvud (Vilho Siivola), Senator Carl Enckell (Yrjö Tähtelä) and State Secretary Gustaf Idman (Yrjö Paulo) arrive in St. Petersburg to meet V.I. Lenin (Kirill Lavrov) to gain recognition for the country's independence.

An Englishman falls in love with a Russian spy.

A squadron of American warplanes, armed with gas developed by Corsican chemist Gannimer (dubbed "Napoleon Gas") flies to Leningrad. American workers inform soviet comrades about the impending catastrophe. But the air attack on the city has already begun, and the assault troops of the enemy capture one suburb of the city after the other. The Red Army is organizing the defense and reflects the attack of the enemy with gas-armed drones

The movie is set during the last days of a foreign intervention against Soviet Russia. Police are searching everywhere for a Bolshevik named Brodsky but cannot find him. Meanwhile, a man named Michel Voronov serves as a teacher to a rich woman's son, Zhen'ka.

The plot is based on the struggle of red partisan-fishermen for the establishment of Soviet order in Armenia.

Based on the story of the same name by Nikolai Bogdanov. Summer 1919. After the sons of the kulaks deserted and went into the woods, in the remote Russian village of Potma there was only the old Bolshevik Matvei and a small Komsomol cell led by Sanya Yermakova. A fierce struggle begins between the Komsomol's and deserters...

This film is based on the book about Vasili Ivanovich Chapaev (1887 - 1919) who was in real life the Commander of the 25th Division of the Red Army. Chapaev is an uneducated peasant and a decorated hero in the World War I and later in the Russian Civil War, that followed the Russian revolution. This man of action is fighting on the side of the poor people. His troops consist of peasants, just like him. Unable to write, he can brilliantly demonstrate various battle tactics by moving potatoes on the table. He is street smart. He never lost a battle against the experienced Generals of the Tzar's Army.

The year is 1919. German troops retreat from Ukraine. The Directory, the Ukrainian national government lead by Symon Petliura, takes control of Kyiv. Meanwhile, the Bolshevik division commanded by Mykola Shchors is marching on the capital. The Bolsheviks capture the cities of Vinnytsia, Zhmerynka, and others one by one, but lose Berdychiv to Petliura’s forces. They are demoralized by the defeat. By his personal example of courage and military skill, Shchors inspires the retreating Red troops and leads them to victory over the enemy.

Russia, 1917. After the abdication of Czar Nicholas II Romanov, the struggle for power confronts allies, enemies, factions and ideas; a ruthless battle between democracy and authoritarianism that will end with the takeover of the government by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

A Soviet era ideological drama based on Nikolai Ostrovsky's famous novel "How Steel Was Tempered".

In 1919, during the post-revolution Russian Civil War, a naval detachment (made up of communist Reds) defends the strategic city of Petrograd from the White Russian counterrevolutionary forces

A portrait of the era of "Red Terror" during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik revolution, The Seventh Companion offers a character study in General Adamov (Andrei Popov), a law professor in the tsarist army, who is incarcerated by the Bolshevik secret police along with many other members of the bourgeoisie. Finally released into the new world of the Soviet Union, the resigned officer finds that he has lost everything from his old life except a mantel clock that he carries through the night from place to place, until he ends up back where he started.

A 1935 USA trade-paper reviewer called it... "an impressive and technically outstanding historical drama dealing with czarist terrorism and revolutionary boiling in the days of 1907. Picture is one of the Soviet prize winners and has particular merits in realistic performance, photography and movement, plus some musical touches in way of folk songs." Written by Les Adams

The story of the Bolshevik revolution through the eyes of a peasant who, as a soldier, gets caught up in the proceedings under the tutelage of Lenin.

The life of the great Bolshevik leader before the Russian revolution is chronicled in this bio-pic. Much of the tale centers on his exile in Poland where Lenin becomes friends with two peasants. The little girl has a strong belief in the nationalist cause. Later Lenin hears she was killed for withholding information about him.

Ukraine, 1919. Bolshevik counter-intelligence agents work to stop an uprising by White Russian nationalist-monarchist counterrevolutionaries. A young countess finds herself caught between her family and class allegiance and burgeoning Communist sympathies inflamed by a chance meeting with a handsome young Ukrainian chekist. The movie was filmed in Soviet Ukraine at the Alexander Dovzhenko Film Studio in 1982.

The film is based on history of the Russian Military garrison in Sveaborg (Suomenlinna, near Helsinki) in Finland, which was an autonomous part of Russian Empire. In 1906 Russia had about 12 thousand troops stationed in Sveaborg fortress. The riots were provoked by the Socialist - Revolutionaries who spread influence on the minds of Sveaborg garrison. First acts of un-subordination broke on July 17, 1906, when revolutionary sailors were supported by mine-men. Minemen were arrested and disarmed by the infantry regiment. Gunners decided to release their comrades. The following fight ignited a bloody revolt, that was headed by lieutenants A. Yemelyanov and Y. Kohansky, members of the Lenin's Bolshevik party. A general strike began in Helsinki on the next day. The revolt lasted three days and was crushed by the Baltic Fleet naval bombardment. Over 40 men were executed, hundreds were sentenced to prison.

In 1917, the people of the Russian Empire are no longer willing to fight Germany, but the bourgeois government of Alexander Kerensky is unwilling to defy its imperialist allies and stop the war. Only Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party is resolute in calling for peace. In the front, the soldiers of one battalion elect three delegates to travel to St. Petersburg with donations the troops collected for the Pravda newspaper: Gudushauri, Panasiuk and Ershov. The three arrive in the capital and describe the horrendous conditions in which the soldiers live to Joseph Stalin, Lenin's trusted aid and colleague. They join the Bolsheviks and take part in the storming of the Winter Palace, led by Stalin and Lenin. Stalin announces that the great dawn of revolution has broken.

A comedy about the happy life of Ukrainian collective farmers. Harvesting in one of the Ukrainian collective farms. The tractor driver Pavlo and the best collective farmer Marinka work perfectly. They love each other. I like not only Paul. The official and adventurer Kovynko has long been yearning for the Marinka and building all sorts of intrigues to the Komsomol members.

About the struggle of the red Army and the revolutionary workers of Petrograd against the white guards in 1919....

A story about high school students whose holidays were overshadowed by the outbreak of war. Enrolling in the militia, they not only staunchly assist the Soviet troops in the rear, but are also ready to defend their native city with weapons in their hands.