The Russian Revolution w/ Lewis Siegelbaum

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Russian Revolution that began with the fall of Tsar Nicholas II in February of 1917 and continued into a second revolution the following October, is unquestionably one of the most significant events in modern history. The October Revolution brought Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party from relative obscurity to the leaders of the first communist nation, later called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and the economic and ideological system espoused by Soviet leaders transformed Russia from an underdeveloped nation on the periphery of Europe into a global super power in just a few decades. In this episode we speak with Russian history expert (and Ben's former dissertation advisor) Lewis Siegelbaum to discuss the series of events that led to the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union, and why he tells his students that ignoring the Soviet Union in 20th century is like "clapping with one hand."

Dr. Lewis Siegelbaum is the Jack & Margaret Sweet Professor of History at Michigan State University, and one of the most prolific historians on the history of the Soviet era. He has published and edited twelve books, the most recent of which are Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile (Cornell University Press, 2008) and Broad is My Native Land: Repertoires and Regimes of Migration in Russia's Twentieth Century (Cornell, 2014), which he co-wrote w Leslie Page Moch. His most recent book is Stuck on Communism: Memoir of a Russian Historian (NIU Press, 2019).

This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer and is a rebroadcast of episode 79, which originally aired on November 16, 2017.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Ben Sawyer and this is The Road to Now.
0:09.9	In today's episode, we are going to stick with what has been a reoccurring theme on this show.
0:16.1	Today's episode is on the Russian Revolution.
0:18.5	Our guest today is none other than my former advisor
0:22.3	in graduate school, Dr. Lewis Siegelbaum, who is now Emeritus Professor of Russian and Soviet
0:28.3	history at Michigan State University. He walks us through the story of the Russian Revolution,
0:35.3	and it is so confusing, I know, to a lot of people. And that's
0:39.0	because there's a ton of different groups. It's very messy. But he's one of the masters. He's one of
0:44.0	the greats in the field. He taught this for decades. And certainly grateful to have worked with him.
0:49.5	And happy to be able to share this episode with all of you. This is a re-air. We originally recorded
0:56.2	this, Bob and I, along with Dr. Siegelbaum, in November of 2017, kind of this crazy moment where
1:03.6	the conference that I was going to, the annual conference, the Association for Slavic, East European
1:09.4	and Eurasian Studies, also known as Aces, the acronym.
1:13.6	It met for four days in Chicago, Illinois.
1:16.7	At the exact same time that the Avic brothers played three nights at the Chicago Theater.
1:21.4	And you're probably thinking, well, Chicago is a pretty big city.
1:24.4	It is.
1:24.9	But the conference hotel was like a block and a half from the Chicago
1:29.8	theater. Like you could see it from the front when you walked out the front. So this was kind of
1:34.1	amazing because two of my favorite things came together. And so as you'll hear, Bob and I met with
1:41.1	Dr. Siegelbaum in the lobby right in the middle of the convention.
1:44.9	As I said, Dr. Segalbaum's published so many books, but since this actually aired, he published a memoir,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Benjamin Sawyer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Benjamin Sawyer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.