Month: February 2017

Peace, (Love?) Bread, Land, and Worker’s Control

Peace and bread (America’s favorite carb) are not words commonly associated with Russia prior to the 1917 Revolutions. At the time: “In Russia, military setbacks, food shortages, popular unrest, and a crisis of political leadership brought about the abdication of the tsar and the demise of the Romanov dynasty in February, 1917” (Virginia Tech European … Continue reading Peace, (Love?) Bread, Land, and Worker’s Control

Get This ParTea Started

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii redefined photography in the early twentieth century because of his ability to depict people’s lives during the Russian Empire, all while documenting it through a lense. His representation of Russian life was extraordinary and unique, however, it was dumbfounding because it exposed the hardships and realities that most Russians faced on a… Continue reading Get This ParTea Started

Revolutionary 1905

Members of the Jewish Bund with Bodies of Their Comrades Killed during the 1905 Revolution. Public Domain, Link

Welcome to the second weekly digest of our Soviet History course. Here you will find articles on a range of topics, with many focusing on the tragedies of “Bloody Sunday” and the contradictory implications of the October Manifesto. These topics are taken up by authors with posts featured in the slider, where you will also find a discussion of Lenin’s conception of the vanguard party and the perils of underground political activity in the late Imperial period. Among the gems our researchers uncovered this week, this virtual museum of an underground printing press is certainly a stand out. Check it out if you want to get a feel for the physical spaces where revolutionaries worked.