This TED Talk features journalist and historian Mikhail Zygar, recorded live at TED 2018.

What is history? It is something written by the winners. There is a stereotype that history should be

focused on the rulers, like Lenin or Trotsky.

As a result, people in many countries, like mine, Russia,

look at history as something that was predetermined,

or determined by the leaders.

And common people could not influence it in any way.

Many Russians today do not believe that Russia could ever have been or ever and common people could not influence it in any way.

Many Russians today do not believe that Russia could ever have been or ever will be a truly democratic nation, and this is due to the way history has been framed to the citizens of Russia.

And this is not true.

To prove it, I spent two years of my life trying to go 100 years back to the year

in 1917, a year of the Russian Revolution.

I asked myself, what if the Internet and Facebook existed 100 years ago?

So, last year, we built a social network for the dead people named Project

1917.com. My team and I created our software, digitized and uploaded all possible real

diaries and letters written by more than 3,000 people 100 years ago.

So any user of our website or application can follow and use feed for each day of 1917

and read what people like Stravinsky or Trotsky, Lenin or Pavlovak and others thought and felt. We watch all

those personalities being ordinary people like you and me, not demigods. And we see that history

consists of their mistakes, fears, weaknesses, not only of their genius ideas.

Our project was a shock for many Russians

who used to think that our country has always been an autocratic empire,

...