The “Potemkin” Mutiny

Abstract

Abstract Histories of Imperial Russia and the U.S.S.R., when dealing with the abortive risings of 1905, seldom omit to mention the mutiny in the Potemkin (the usual transliteration from the Cyrillic; phonetically it should be spelled Potyomkin). Richard Charques's The Twilight of Imperial Russia and Alan Moorehead's The Russian Revolution are recent examples. But these references are always tantalizingly brief; no details are given. For students of the cinema the affair has been given significance by Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, adjudged a classic among silent films; but, from the historian's point of view, this suffers from both dramatic licence and political considerations; it was made in the U.S.S.R. The Revolt of the Potemkin (of which an English translation was published in 1908), by Constantine Feldman, an Odessa revolutionary, is likewise both superficial and inaccurate. Any attempt to remedy these shortcomings is open to the criticism that it is not possible to consult the only presumably accurate records, the reports made by the Commander-in-Chief, Black Sea Fleet, to the Russian Admiralty in St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, a reasonable version of the affair, of which there is none more extraordinary in naval annals, can be reconstructed from other sources, notably the St. Petersburg Official Messenger and British consular reports to the Foreign Office, which include a statement by one of the mutineers.