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26 Commissioners
Movie

26 Commissioners

1932 • Unknown

Woke Score
7
out of 10

Plot

Docu-drama about political and military conflict during the Russian Civil War in 1918, from an orthodox pro-Communist viewpoint.

Overall Series Review

The 1932 Soviet docu-drama '26 Commissioners' chronicles the true events of the Baku Commissars' resistance and execution during the Russian Civil War. The film is a piece of orthodox Communist propaganda, pitting the heroic, multi-ethnic Bolshevik proletariat against the 'White' anti-revolutionaries and the treacherous Anglo-American interventionists. The narrative is structured as a clear-cut battle between the morally superior working class and the inherently corrupt former ruling class. It celebrates the violent overthrow of the old social order, demonizes all forms of Western/Imperialist influence, and frames the Marxist-Leninist ideology as the only path to collective salvation. The focus is strictly on political and class struggle, which aligns with several modern 'woke' tropes, particularly in its Manichean view of power, but it excludes modern sexual and racial identity politics.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics7/10

The plot's central conflict relies entirely on an oppressor/oppressed hierarchy, where the merit of the Bolshevik Commissars and proletariat is based on their political-economic class identity. The anti-revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and foreign interventionists (Anglo-Americans) are vilified not based on race but on their affiliation with the 'bourgeois' oppressor class. The narrative exists to lecture on systemic class oppression and the necessary struggle for 'proletariat privilege,' which is a direct transposition of the modern intersectional lens into 1930s Marxist-Leninist theory.

Oikophobia10/10

The film explicitly rejects and calls for the total deconstruction of the 'old' culture, specifically Tsarist Russia, its bourgeois institutions, and its foreign/imperialist allies. The home culture and history are framed as fundamentally corrupt and in need of violent overthrow. The working-class revolution is depicted as the spiritually and morally superior alternative to the corrupt Western/Capitalist civilization represented by the Anglo-Americans, which directly maps to the 'Civilizational Self-Hatred' and 'Noble Savage' tropes.

Feminism6/10

The film promotes the revolutionary ideology's anti-family message, viewing traditional structures as bourgeois relics that must be dissolved for collective political fulfillment. The heroic figures, the 26 Commissars, are male, but the narrative likely features women as equal, de-gendered comrades and workers for the Party's cause. This pushes a strongly anti-natalist and anti-complementarian message in favor of career (revolutionary work) as the only fulfillment, though the 'Girl Boss' trope itself is absent.

LGBTQ+1/10

The Soviet state apparatus of 1932 was focused on class and political identity, not sexual or gender identity. The narrative maintains a normative structure where the traditional male-female pairing is simply replaced by the collective comradeship of the Party. Sexual politics are considered a private matter or a non-issue compared to the class struggle, and there is no lecturing on gender theory or centering of alternative sexualities.

Anti-Theism10/10

The core Soviet message of the film is built on historical materialism, which explicitly rejects transcendent morality and views faith as the 'opium of the people' and a tool of the oppressive class. Any presentation of traditional religion, specifically Christianity (the Russian Orthodox Church), would be as a pillar of the corrupt Tsarist system and a tool of bigots and the ruling class. Morality is entirely subjective to the historical 'power dynamics' of class warfare, demanding a score of 10.