History Changes Gears: The Russian Revolution of 1917—A Centennial Lecture

The centennial of the Russian Revolution of 1917 serves as the occasion for this lecture, which will recount the broad sweep of events that led to the downfall of the Russian autocracy in the February Revolution and then, eight months later, the storming to power of the Bolshevik Party in the name of the Soviets—an event once celebrated as the Great October Socialist Revolution. The lecture will assess the role of individual actors on the scene, from the last Romanov Tsars to the first Soviet Commissars, as well as the social forces that propelled the revolution forward despite the efforts of the Provisional Government in Petrograd, the Russian capital, to hold back the tide. Key figures include Tsar Nicholas II, Alexander Kerensky, leader of the Provisional Government, and Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the architects of Red October. 

The lecture will feature photographs and political posters on display in The Crown under the Hammer: Russia, Romanovs & Revolution, an exhibition jointly sponsored by the Hoover Institution Library and Archives and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford (opening on October 18 at both the Hoover Institution and the Cantor Arts Center). Bertrand Patenaude is co-curator of the exhibition. 

Bertrand M. Patenaude, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution; Lecturer in History and International Relations, Stanford

Bertrand M. Patenaude’s first book, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921, received the 2003 Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize and was made into a documentary film for the award-winning PBS history series American Experience. His most recent book, Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, was serialized for radio by the BBC. He is also the author of A Wealth of Ideas: Revelations from the Hoover Institution Archives. Patenaude lectures frequently for Stanford Travel/Study. He received a PhD in history from Stanford.