The Fall of Tsarism: Untold Stories of the February 1917 Revolution: Translation and Annotations
FAIN: FA-55134-10
Semion Lyandres
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN 46556-4635)
I am proposing an annotated English translation of 16 previously unknown interviews with leaders of the February 1917 Revolution (FR). The interviews describe key political developments that led to the overthrow of the Old Regime and the interviewees' participation in the revolutionary events of February-March. Recorded during May-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 represent the most significant, contemporary, direct testimony on the FR known to historians of modern Russia. The proposed scholarly edition (under contract with Oxford UP) of these gripping, first-hand accounts will be aimed at a broad market of English-speaking scholars, students, and general readers with an interest in modern Russian and European history. When they are published, scholars will be equipped to rewrite textbook accounts of the FR and rethink what they know and teach about politics of 1917.