Tsar to Lenin is a documentary and cinematic record of the Russian Revolution, produced by Herman Axelbank.

[7] The narration is provided by the American radical Max Eastman, who was originally slated to write captions to explain the scenes and help raise money to finance the project.

Eastman's narration for this sequence is, "This is the first time the world has seen a king as he really is!”[10] The film premiered at the Filmarte Theater in New York City on March 6, 1937.

The documentary, which appeared at the height of the Moscow Trials, showed the chief defendant, Trotsky, in an extremely favorable light.

It said, The Filmarte Theater, and others, were then told that they would not be allowed to show other films such as Sergei Eisenstein's October: Ten Days That Shook the World, effectively ending the first run of Tsar to Lenin.