Description

Fresh new miniseries this week as I get started on unpacking the Soviet Union's early years. But as you're probably familiar with by now, a topic that big deserves some setup, and today I begin a way-too-fast overview of the conditions in the Russian Empire leading up to the early 1900s. In short, the place was a mess and it turns out that an out-of-touch autocracy wasn't the best institution to fix it. 

Bibliography for this episode: 

1. Hosking, Geoffrey Russia and the Russians: A History The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2001
2. Figes, Orlando A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1917 Penguin Books 1998
3. Smith, SA Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis 1890-1928 Oxford University Press 2018
4. Fitzpatrick, Sheila The Russian Revolution, 4th Edition Oxford University Press 2017
5. Kotkin, Stephen Stalin: Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928 Penguin Books 2015

Questions? Comments? Email me at peaceintheirtime@gmail.com