The Deepening of the Russian Revolution: 1917

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About Us

Introduction to the Project

Our goal is to create a digital timeline to showcase the connections among a range of social groups as they were experiencing the complex upheavals of the eight-month period from February to October 1917, the period commonly known as the Russian Revolution.

The project came out of a realization that students were writing first-rate papers based on new collections of primary sources that scholars have been unearthing and carefully translating for publication. It was also inspired by an awareness of the tremendous capabilities of the Web as a place to synthesize and display information in innovative ways.

The timeline arranges materials across time (by linking documents and analyses to particular dates) and across social categories (by highlighting the experiences of activists, soldiers, workers, and peasants). Both the x and y axes, as we would say at MIT, are fundamentally arbitrary. No event in history occurs on a single date. And the social categories were thoroughly interconnected in this moment (most soldiers were peasants; many activists were workers or soldiers or peasants, and so on). Nonetheless, it is our hope that by posting three kinds of sources (primary sources from the time, scholarly articles, and analyses written by students at MIT), we will create an engaging visual representation that will allow viewers to explore and reach their own conclusions about the complexity of the Russian Revolution.

How we are supported

The project organizers wish to express their gratitude to the Alumni Class Funds administered by the Office of Faculty Support for financial support and to the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology for research staff support.