{"id":386,"date":"2016-09-07T10:53:55","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T14:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=386"},"modified":"2016-09-07T10:54:37","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T14:54:37","slug":"19172017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2016\/09\/07\/19172017\/","title":{"rendered":"1917\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Soldiers_demonstration.February_1917\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Stephen Norris<\/p>\n

In March 1917, Mikhail Serafimovich, a private in the Russian cavalry, composed a poem that proclaimed \u201cLong live free Russia,\u201d a sentiment that \u201cfloods my soul\u201d and \u201cstills my heart.\u201d\u00a0 Serafimovich was overjoyed with the news that Nicholas II had abdicated his throne and that Russia would cease to be an autocracy and could instead become \u201cfree.\u201d\u00a0 That same month, A. Zemskov, a factory worker who had deserted from the army, wrote to the new Russian Minister of Justice, Alexander Kerensky, to complain that \u201cfreedom\u201d had not really come to Russia and that the new government was still \u201cfounded on coercing its own subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

By October 1917, Zemskov was vindicated.\u00a0 The Bolshevik Party seized power from the ineffective Provisional Government on October 24. A worker named Frants Kontaka wrote to the Bolshevik paper Pravda <\/em>that he and his comrades at the Obukhov Metal Works had turned away from Kerensky and toward the Bolsheviks, noting that workers from his factory \u201cwere the first to come out with weapons in hand\u201d in order to support the October Revolution \u201cto their last drop of blood.\u201d\u00a0 At the same time, however, a \u201cformer Bolshevik\u201d from Rostov wrote Vladimir Lenin that he had once believed in him and his promises but now believed he had \u201cestablished a Nicholas kind of freedom,\u201d closing by writing \u201cI curse you and all your comrades in the Council of Usurpers and Betrayers of our native land.\u201d<\/p>\n

These experiences\u2014four of thousands that could be invoked\u2014illustrate the passions, complexities, and voices of 1917.\u00a0 For some people living through the changes that brought an end to the old regime in February and the establishment of the world\u2019s first socialist system in October, these were days of excitement, a chance to remake virtually everything.\u00a0 Others viewed these events with fear, believing them to be \u201ccursed days\u201d (as the writer Ivan Bunin called them).\u00a0 Still others welcomed the abdication of Nicholas II but fought to prevent the Bolsheviks from seizing power.\u00a0 As the voices above attest, words such as \u201cfreedom,\u201d \u201cliberty,\u201d \u201ctyranny,\u201d \u201chomeland,\u201d and \u201chonor\u201d served as weapons in the battles for meaning in 1917.\u00a0 The prominent historian Mark Steinberg has argued that \u201cmodern revolutions are exceptionally loquacious events,\u201d and Russia proved no exception.\u00a0 Words, he writes, gave the events and actions of 1917 \u201cshape and substance.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we approach the centenary of this watershed year in Russian and world history, the Havighurst Center will be sponsoring a series of lectures and events dedicated to rethinking 1917.\u00a0 I will be teaching our fall colloquium on the subject \u201cRussia in War and Revolution.\u201d\u00a0 Students will hear lectures from six prominent scholars and will be reading the words of participants in the dramatic events of 1916 and 1917.\u00a0 They will also be writing their own words that try to reinterpret the meanings of the revolutions, working with objects in King Library\u2019s Havighurst Special Collections.\u00a0 Next fall, Scott Kenworthy will teach the colloquium on the Russian Revolution and will continue these engagements.\u00a0 This fall students in Venelin Ganev\u2019s class will also explore the political ramifications of 1917 in his course on communism and Soviet politics.\u00a0 Other curricular efforts connected to 1917, to highlight two, will take place in Benjamin Sutcliffe\u2019s class on Russian literature, where students will read Boris Pasterrnak\u2019s masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago<\/em>, and in Irina Anisimova\u2019s class \u201cSci-Fi between East and West,\u201d where students will read Evgeny Zamyatin\u2019s dystopic vision of 1917, We<\/em>. \u00a0Look for posts on this blog from students writing about these topics.<\/p>\n

While we reexamine the history and culture of 1917, we will also pay attention to pressing issues of the present and the past, connecting 1917 to 2017.\u00a0 Dan Prior\u2019s course on Eurasian nomads reminds us all of the complex histories and cultures of peoples the Bolsheviks sought to transform.\u00a0 Venelin Ganev\u2019s spring 2017 colloquium series, \u00a0\u201cEastern Europe and the European Union: Politics in the Post-Expansion Era,\u201d will explore the issue of EU ascension in parts of the former Soviet Union, allowing students to engage with controversial and complex problems that stem in part from the collapse of the system established in 1917.\u00a0 We are also welcoming two new postdoctoral fellows to the Center, Emily Channell-Justice and Elana Resnick, who will both be teaching courses in Anthropology and International Studies that explore these connections between the past and the present.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Center will sponsor film screenings, lectures, events, and other programing related to 1917\/2017.\u00a0 Our annual Young Researchers Conference, coordinated by Benjamin Sutcliffe with help from Zara Torlone, will take place in Cuma, Italy, and will allow young scholars a chance to engage further with the centennial while also seeing some of the sites associated with the \u201ccradle of revolution,\u201d Capri, where Gorky, Lenin, Bogdanov, and others hatched plans for revolution and dreamed of change.\u00a0 Stay tuned for more details as they develop and please join us in what promises to be an exciting year at the Havighurst Center!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The quotes come from the wonderful collection edited by Mark Steinberg entitled Voices of Revolution, 1917<\/em>, published in 2001 by Yale University Press.\u00a0 Professor Steinberg spoke at Miami in 2012.\u00a0 His new history of the Russian Revolution will appear with Oxford University Press in spring 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  By Stephen Norris In March 1917, Mikhail Serafimovich, a private in the Russian cavalry, composed a poem that proclaimed \u201cLong live free Russia,\u201d a sentiment that \u201cfloods my soul\u201d and \u201cstills my heart.\u201d\u00a0 Serafimovich was overjoyed with the news … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-editorials","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}