The General Line was begun in 1927 as a celebration of the collectivisation of agriculture, which the Bolshevik Leon Trotsky championed. In order to reach a wide audience, Eisenstein abandoned his usual practice of highlighting groups and focused on a single heroine from the countryside. The director had to put the project on hold to shoot October. By the time he was able to return to the film, Trotsky had already fallen out of favour. The film was hastily re-edited and released in 1929 under the new title The Old and the New. In later years, the film was restored to closely resemble Eisenstein's original concept.