The Russian Revolution as Utopian Leap

2017 marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution, one of the great transformations of political belief. In his new book, The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921, University of Illinois historian Mark Steinberg gives a powerful sense of living through those turbulent times, drawing from public art, discourse on the streets and in the press, and literature ranging from worker poetry to Mayakovsky. Exploring inequality, power, resistance, justice, and ideas about possibility and the future, Steinberg talks about events in ways that speak to our times.

This program is presented in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago in association with the exhibition Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities.