Die Mutter (1958)

On the edge of a poor industrial suburb, a communist group is trying to organize a strike. At their factory, the owner intends to cut wages by one kopeck. Pavel, the son of Pelagea Vlassova, a worker’s widow, has also joined the group. At a secret late-night meeting in the Vlassovas’ kitchen, the group decides that Pavel should smuggle banned leaflets into the factory. Someone has to do it, at any rate, to relieve the previous day’s distributor, who was arrested, since leaflets are appearing again. His mother tries in vain to dissuade Pavel from sympathizing with the Marxist group. Because the group has been under surveillance for some time, the police suddenly burst in during the discussion and search the house. The leaflets, hastily hidden, are not found. Since the police behave with extreme brutality during the search, his mother decides to protect her son and take over Pavel’s task. The next day, she distributes the leaflets in his place; they call for a strike against the wage cut. The May Day demonstration becomes a turning point in the mother’s life. Until then, she had believed that the tsarist police obeyed the law and did not attack peaceful demonstrators; now she learns otherwise. When the bearer of the red flag is shot, she is the one who carries it onward. Pavel is arrested, and the mother is hidden by the worker Semyon Lapkin at his brother Fyodor’s home. Fyodor is an anti-communist teacher. The mother comes increasingly under communist influence and becomes more and more involved with the party. Along with several neighbors, she even learns to read and write. Through the influence of Pelagea’s friends, the teacher, too, gradually becomes a communist. During the unrest of the peasant and workers’ uprisings in the autumn of 1905, the mother actively takes the lead in bringing peasants and workers together. Even an estate butcher sees the truth in her arguments and becomes a communist. Pavel escapes from prison and visits his mother. She will see him for the last time. But because she does not know this, printing leaflets is much more important to her than cutting him a slice of bread. Shortly afterward, his comrades arrive to accompany Pavel as he continues his escape. For taking part in an uprising, Pavel is sentenced to death and executed. This breaks his mother. The threat of war, however, spurs her on once more. She takes to the streets for the Bolsheviks to oppose the war and tries to expose its folly. In recognition of her active work, she even receives a membership card for the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). In October 1917, the tsar has been overthrown. The Russian proletarians are in control.