The Russian Revolution unfolds through the contrasting figures of Lenin and Maxim Gorky, one the architect of Bolshevik theory, the other a writer forced to reckon with what that theory looked like once it hit the streets. The film traces the collapse of the Tsarist order through 1917, from the February uprising that toppled Nicholas II to the October seizure of power, using archival images, period photographs, and narration to reconstruct the sequence of strikes, soldiers' mutinies, and party maneuvering that produced the Bolshevik state. Gorky's own writings and public breaks with Lenin over the violence of the new regime give the film its central tension, contrasting revolutionary theory with its practical costs in blood and repression. Petrograd's streets, the Winter Palace, and the factional meetings of the revolutionary parties anchor the account in specific places rather than abstraction. The film treats 1917 less as a single triumphant event than as a collision between an idea and the brutal mechanics required to enact it.