Conference: Commemorating the Revolution: October 1917 (Woodrow Wilson Center)

Date of Conference: October 23, 2017

The Kennan Institute will be hosting its final event marking the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Speakers will focus on the policies of the Provisional Government, the Bolshevik victory, and the political and military consequences that followed in its immediate aftermath. The seminar will be followed by a book talk from 4:00 – 5:30 by William Taubman, who will be discussing his new biography on Mikhail Gorbachev. Thus, the day’s proceedings will cover the beginning and the end of the Soviet Union.

The seminar has been generously supported by the editorial board of the book series Russia’s Great War and Revolution, a multinational scholarly effort that aims to fundamentally transform understanding of Russia’s “continuum of crisis” during the years 1914-1922. The book talk is an event in the Washington History Seminar series, sponsored jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program.

Agenda:

10:00 – 12:00  Panel 1: The Continuum of Crisis and Possibility of Change.

Professor William Rosenberg, University of Michigan, “Political Narratives and the Problem of Power in 1917”

Professor Dan Orlovsky, Southern Methodist University, “The Rise and Fall of the Provisional Government”

Dr. William Pomeranz, Kennan Institute, “Investigating the Revolution in Real Time: The Murav’ev Commission and the Investigation of the July Days”

Professor Laurie Stoff, Arizona State University, “The October Revolution and the Dilemmas of Gender”

12:00 – 1:15  Lunch Time Key Note Speaker: Professor Angela Stent, Georgetown University

1:15 – 3:15  Panel 2: October 1917 and its Aftermath

Professor Christopher Read, University of Warwick, “Lenin and the Bolshevik Seizure of Power”

Professor Eric Lohr, American University, “The Changing Face of Russian Citizenship in 1917”

Professor John Steinberg, Austin Peay State University, “The Disintegration of the Russian Army and the Search for Peace”

Professor Liudmila Novikova, Higher School of Economics, “Anti-Bolshevik Alternatives in the Russian Civil War”

4:00 – 5:30 Gorbachev: His Life and Times (RSVP separately)

Professor William Taubman, Amherst College (Emeritus)

Commentator: Svetlana Savranskaya, The George Washington University

Commentator: Michael Dobbs, Author of One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

For more information, visit here.