1917-2017 Centennial of the Russian Revolution
Retracing the Revolution
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 1914 | Martial law declared in the Russian Empire |
| July 28, 1914 | Declaration of war by Austria-Hungary on Serbia begins the first World War |
| August 1915 | Tsar Nicholas II leaves the Russian heartland for the wartime front |
| June/July 1916 | The Brusilov Offensive signifies the last major Russian military success of the war |
| January 1917 | The Menshevicks call for nation-wide revolution in Russia |
| February 23, 1917 | The February Revolution begins in Saint Petersburg on International Women's Day and the Provisional Government is established as the ruling administrative power in the empire |
| February 27, 1917 | The Tsar orders the use of violence to quell civil unrest |
| February 28, 1917 | Soldiers mutiny against the government and the Petrograd Soviet is formed |
| March 2, 1917 | Tsar Nicholas II abdicates the throne |
| April 4, 1917 | Lenin publishes his April Theses condemning the Provisional Government for its incapacity to call an end to the "imperialist" war that Russia found itself in and calls for further revolution in Russia |
| June 1917 | The June Offensive fails, further exacerbating Russian hardship caused by an increasingly costly war |
| August 1917 | General Lavr Kornilov attempts to seize control of power from the Provisional Government in what is deemed the Kornilov Affair |
| October 24, 1917 | Provisional forces move against the Bolsheviks in Saint Petersburg |
| October 25, 1917 | Bolshevik revolutionaries storm the Winter Palace and seize control of power from the Provisional Government |
| March 3, 1918 | The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed, withdrawing Russia from the First World War, ceding much of the former territory of the Russian Empire |
| Late March 1918 - October 1922 | The Russian Civil War rages until the Bolsheviks consolidate power, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on December 30, 1922 |
Reading the Revolution
To find out more about the period surrounding the 1917 Revolution, we asked professors Scott Kenworthy (religion), Steve Norris (history), and Ben Sutcliffe (russian) to give us a list of their "must reads." We list them below.
Literary
Babel, Isaak, Red Cavalry (BS)
Bulgakov, Mikhail, Heart of a Dog (SK)
Bulgakov, Mikhail, The White Guard (SK)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Demons (BS)
Pasternak, Boris, Doctor Zhivago (SK, SN, BS)
Sholokhov, Mikhail, And Quiet Flows the Don (BS)
Slavnikova, Ol’ga, 2017: A Novel (BS)
Zamyatin, Evgeny, We (SK, SN, BS)
Primary Historical
Daly, Jonathan and Leonid Trofimov (eds.), Russia in War and Revolution, 1914-1922: A Documentary History
Evlogy, Metropolitan, My Life's Journey: The Memoirs of Metropolitan Evlogy (SK)
Reed,John, Ten Days that Shook the World (SN)
Sukhanov, Nikolai, The Russian Revolution, 1917; A Personal Record (SK)
Trotsky, Leon, History of the Russian Revolution
Secondary Historical
Figes, Orlando, A People’s Tragedy (SN)
Holquist, Peter, Making War, Forging Revolution
Retish, Aaron, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War
Smith, S. A., The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (SN)
Steinberg, Mark, The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 (SN)
Steinberg, Mark, Voices of Revolution, 1917 (SN)
Stites, Richard, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution
Suny, Ronald (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia: Volume III, The Twentieth Century
Revolution Multimedia Resources
Music
Интернационал (international), International –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpvwh292VKI
Варшавянка (varshavyanka)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIBtxQEJ1ik
Красное знамя (krasnoye znamia), The Red Banner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lmtMYMkw54
Смело, товарищи, в ногу (Smelo, tovarishi, v nogu), Boldly, Comrades, In Step
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFXC-sZoHZc
Вы жертвою пали (Vy, zhertvoiu pali), You Fell Victims
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otpri4FZCHI
Movies
Early Memorialization of the Revolution
- Eisenstein
- Strike (1925)
- Battleship Potemkin (1925)
- October (1927)
- Pudovkin
- Mother (1926)
- The End of St. Petersburg (1927)
- Storm Over Asia (1928)
- The New Babylon (1928)
- Lev Kuleshov
- The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924)
- Esfir Shub
- The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927)
- Alexander Dovzhenko
- Zvenigora (1928)
- Arsenal (1928)
- Earth (1930)
- Dziga Vertov
- Kino-Eye (1924)
- Kino-Pravda (1925)
- A Sixth of the World (1926)
- Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
Recent Memorialization
- Shakhnazarov
- The Rider Named Death (2004)
- Balabanov, Morphine (2008)
- Lopushanskii
- The Role (2013)
- Fedorchenko
- Angels of Revolution (2014)
Evdokiya Usikova, Lenin with Villagers (1959) |
Alexander Radakov, The Autocratic System (1917)
|
Boris Kustodiev, The Bolshevik (1920) |
Petrov Kuzmin, 1918 in Petrograd (1920)
|
Havighurst Center for East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies
