On a recent evening at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, Vladimir Lenin paced back and forth, debating the finer points of Marxist theory, Vladimir Mayakovsky thundered staccato lines of poetry from atop a pedestal, and the monk Grigory Rasputin mused ominously on the future of Russia.

The event, in which hundreds of modern Moscow’s artistic and creative elite dressed as tsarist-era aristocrats, ate black caviar by the spoonful and drank champagne, was the launch party for an ambitious new project designed to bring the events of 1917 to life for modern Russians 100 years later.

As the country enters the centenary of the tumultuous year that ended tsarism and ushered in the 70-year communist experiment, President Vladimir Putin faces the dilemma of how to commemorate the events that had such a huge effect on Russia and the world.

“There is no officially approved narrative of 1917; it’s too difficult and complicated,” said Mikhail Zygar, the journalist who is running the reconstruction project. “But it’s a very important period to help understand what’s happening in Russia now, and very important for the national consciousness.”

The year featured two revolutions: the February revolution (actually in March, according to the modern calendar) deposed Tsar Nicholas II after more than 300 years of rule by the Romanov dynasty, ushering in a brief period in which hopes for a democratic future flourished. Lenin’s Bolsheviks, a small, marginal faction of fanatics who were not taken seriously in the aftermath of the February uprising, took control in the October revolution (actually in November).

During the Soviet period, 7 November, the anniversary of the revolution, was the biggest holiday of the year, and Lenin was memorialised in statues, literature and legends imparted to every Soviet schoolchild.

“While children now grow up with Harry Potter, I grew up with Lenin,” said Zygar, who until earlier this year was editor-in-chief of TV Rain, an independent channel, and also released a book on Putin and his inner circle. He said he wanted to work on a historical project because “there is no real news in modern Russia, there is just a pseudo-agenda. It became boring, whereas this seems like something that can be really important.”

During his long years in power, Putin has used history to help create a sense of national destiny and unity in Russia, most notably elevating victory in the second world war to something close to a national cult. More recently, figures from the distant past have also been co-opted into the narrative, including Vladimir the Great, the prince of Kiev who adopted Orthodox Christianity in 988, whose monument was erected outside the Kremlin last month. A monument has even been unveiled to Ivan the Terrible, a ruthless ruler who killed his own son, on the basis that he doubled Russia’s territory.Under Putin, Russians are encouraged to see history as a long list of achievements, with darker elements such as Stalin’s purges and the Gulag brushed to one side.

In this context, 1917 is problematic. On the one hand, the Soviet state that came from the revolution was the one that won the war and whose military and scientific achievements Putin thinks should be venerated. But on the other hand Putin has elevated “stability” to being one of the key tenets of his rule, and as such celebrating a revolution goes against the very grain of his political philosophy.

“There’s no official line from the Kremlin – they can’t identify themselves with Lenin, because he was a revolutionary, and they can’t identify with Nicholas II because he was a weak leader,” said Zygar.

Putin’s main public comments on the anniversary so far have suggested he indeed views the year as a tragedy for the Russian nation. In his address to Russia’s elite earlier this month, Putin spoke about the current migration crisis in Europe and warned of the dangers of uprising.

An exhibition of a unique dual canvas with a portrait of Tsar Nicholas II on one side and Lenin on the other in in St Petersburg last month. Photograph: Anatoly Maltsev/EPA

“We know well the consequences that these great upheavals can bring. Unfortunately, our country went through many such upheavals and their consequences in the 20th century,” said Putin.

“Next year, 2017, will mark the 100th anniversary of the February and October revolutions. This is a good moment for looking back on the causes and nature of these revolutions in Russia … Let’s remember that we are a single people, a united people, and we have only one Russia.”

Modern Russia has never properly dealt with the legacy of 1917. Across the country, the iconography of the revolution and its leaders is still confused. Visitors to Moscow can still pay their respects to Lenin’s mummified corpse, which peers sinisterly out of its glass box inside the marble mausoleum on Red Square. But across the cobbles from the founder of Russian communism, a flashy department store draws rich Muscovites to its expensive fashion departments.

The last tsar and his family have been made into saints by the Russian Orthodox Church, and yet a Moscow metro station is still named after Pyotr Voikov, the man responsible for organising their execution.

In 1991 the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka (the precursor of the KGB) was pulled down from its perch in central Moscow. Leningrad reverted to its imperial name, St Petersburg. But after this initial flurry of activity, the disposal of the iconography of the Soviet past came to a halt. Most cities still have a Lenin standing proudly in their main squares; many streets retain their Soviet names: there are Lenin, Marx, Komsomol (Soviet youth organisation), Red Partisan and Dictatorship of the Proletariat streets across the vast country. Moscow has an October cinema, an October metro station, and a Revolution Square.

But while there has been no great effort to remove the revolutionary iconography, it does not feature much in public discourse, with all the focus instead on victory in the second world war. Even on Revolution Day on 7 November, the main event this year was a recreation of the military parade held on Red Square in November 1941, after which the troops marched straight to the front. With this sleight of hand, even Revolution Day is now actually a celebration of the war effort.

Opinion is divided on the revolution among Russians. A recent survey on Ekho Moskvy radio about whether people would support the February revolution against Nicholas II found that only 47% said they would; 53% wouldn’t.

Russian communist party supporters carry portraits of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on 7 November. Photograph: Vasily Maximov/AFP/Getty Images

“This is pretty interesting, because in 1917 absolutely nobody supported Nicholas,” said Zygar. With the cult of stability in Putin’s Russia, many Russians are opposed to the idea of revolution while supporting the powerful Soviet state that later emerged under Stalin. Nevertheless, a recent survey by the independent Levada Centre of pollsters showed that 53% of Russians have a positive view of Lenin’s role in history, compared with just 27% with a negative view (20% said they didn’t know).

Zygar’s project involves hundreds of voices from the time – politicians, artists, intellectuals, quoted in their own words on an online portal each day 100 years later. The project has already started and will run all the way through 2017 until 18 January 2018, 100 years after the Bolsheviks dissolved the constituent assembly and cemented their rule.

“It is going to be very interesting to see how the official narrative explains the events of 1917,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant who was an adviser to the Kremlin for many years. “It will be portrayed simultaneously as a great event and a terrible tragedy. Who knows, in our times when there is a complete absence of historical truth, maybe they’ll even blame it on the Americans.”