From St Petersburg to Notre Dame

This is a digital version of the exhibit that was held at the Department of Rare Books and Special Collection, University of Notre Dame Libraries during Fall 2012.

The Russian Revolution of February 1917 was a defining event of the twentieth century. In nine short days, the centuries-old tsarist regime was overthrown, and a chain of events was set in motion that led to the disintegration of the Russian empire and the rise of the Soviet regime that would come to dominate the world stage. Yet even today, as we approach the centennial of the Russian Revolution—and twenty years after the opening of the previously inaccessible Russian archives—historians still lack firsthand contemporary accounts of what happened during those nine fateful days. This exhibit presents selections from the earliest known and heretofore unexamined oral histories (interviews) of the February Revolution as told by its leading participants shortly after the events. The interviews had been conducted and recorded by the Interview Commission under the direction of a noted St. Petersburg historian Mikhail Aleksandrovich Polievktov its work had been part of a larger effort undertaken by the Society for the Study of the Russian Revolution to document the course of the 1917 Revolution. Recorded during 1 May–7 June 1917, months before the Bolsheviks came to power and at a time when the outcome of the revolution was far from obvious, the interviews are free from post-1917 hindsight and represent the most significant firsthand contemporary testimonies on the overthrow of Europe’s last old regime.

View the digital exhibit here.