The Bought Revolution
2007
Directed by Marc Brasse
Customer: ZDF/Spiegel TV
How the German Reich Put Lenin in Power in 1917
There have always been shady adventurers amongst the “men who make history”. Yet, barely any of them wrought such a massive historical upheaval while sinking into oblivion as one Israil Lasarewitsch Helphand, who under the alias of “Alexander Parvus” helped to organize an epochal event in 1917: Lenin’s Bolshevist October Revolution, a coup which installed socialism around half the world. Only seventy years later was it to collapse. The revolution was financed using German money, with the idea coming from Alexander Parvus. On January 7, 1915, he entered the Embassy of the German Reich in Constantinople. Born in Russia, he was no stranger in political circles.
