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Stepping Back a Century: Project 1917


Pskov railway station, very close to the site of Nicholas II's abdication

This Wednesday it will be one hundred years since Nicholas II abdicated, bringing an end to the Romanov dynasty and with it, Tsarism itself. I don’t know about you but at school I was taught to think of 1917 as the year of the Russian revolution, as if it were a single event. In reality, as you are probably aware, there were two revolutions, the February revolution, culminating in the event mentioned above and then the October revolution in which the Bolsheviks seized power.

As at least one or two commentators have suggested, the centenary of that tumultuous year puts the Kremlin in a somewhat awkward position Kremlin as the complexity of what took place precludes the drawing of a nice neat official line. This does, I imagine, make life a little easier for those who think the anniversary should actually be acknowledged, however.

I studied history at uni and continue (echoing Dan Carlin’s phrase here) to be a fan of the subject, so Project 1917 seems almost tailor-made to appeal to me. The site, which is the brainchild of Mikhail Zygar, is designed to look like a social network. Updates are posted in real time minus one hundred years, that is to say, exactly one hundred years on from the day they were originally written. By default, the most significant events of the day will appear at the top of the feed, but by signing in with Facebook and choosing to follow people from the extensive ‘main characters’ list, you can receive notifications when they post. As the project summary is careful to point out, in spite of the ‘main characters’ designation, this is no work of fiction; it is entirely based on primary sources, complete with citations. These range from diary entries, to personal correspondence, to newspaper articles. The scope of the material is impressive; while events in Russia are centre stage, it also includes material that has no direct relationship at all to what was happening there (such as this example), I suppose to give you context in the broadest sense of the term.

Unlike many of the other things I've reviewed on this site, this is very much a Russian-led endeavour. There are two versions of the site, one in Russian, the other in English. The latter has been produced in association with Pushkin House. Incidentally, I’d argue that because of this, Project 1917 has enormous potential as a language learning resource for someone with a reasonably good level of Russian but who is looking to improve. That said, my one quibble about the site is that there isn’t a neat way of toggling between the Russian and English language versions of a post; instead you have to go back to the main page to make the switch and then find the post again.

Finally, returning to the subject of official lines, I would say that the creators of 1917 don’t have one. However, I do suspect that there is an underlying philosophy; namely that the past, if examined closely enough, defies simple explanations. You can’t draw a neat line.

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