In a July 23, 2002 review of "Lenin," a book by Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, translated by George Holoch. Holmes & Meier, 371 pp, £35. Slavoj Zizek mentions a vast theatrical recreation of the Storming of the Winter Palace during the October Revolution:

He writes:

On 7 November 1920, on the third anniversary of the October Revolution, a re-enactment of the Storming of the Winter Palace was performed in Petrograd.

Tens of thousands of workers, soldiers, students and artists had worked round the clock, living on kasha (tasteless porridge), tea and frozen apples, to prepare the performance, which took place just where the original event had occurred. Their work was coordinated by army officers, as well as avant-garde artists, musicians and directors, from Malevich to Meyerhold.

Although this was theatre and not 'reality', the soldiers and sailors who took part played themselves. Many of them had not only participated in 1917, but were, at the time of the performance, fighting in the civil war - Petrograd was under siege in 1920 and suffering from severe food shortages.

A contemporary commented: "The future historian will record how, throughout one of the bloodiest and most brutal revolutions, all of Russia was acting"; the Formalist theoretician Viktor Shklovsky noted that "some kind of elemental process is taking place where the living fabric of life is being transformed into the theatrical."

Now THAT was what you might call communty theater on a grand scale.