Russian Lessons of 1917

Dr. Gary Saul Morson

Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities, Professor of Slavic Literature and Languages at Northwestern University.

This year, 2017, marks the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, an event that tragically reshaped Russian and Western history. How such an extraordinary event, and the ghastly regime it produced, could ever have happened depended not only on a great war, and the theoretical arcana of Karl Marx but, perhaps even more, on the outlook of the Russian intelligentsia and its assumptions about its social role. These same psychological and ideological predispositions continue to be found among intellectuals today. Hence, understanding the cultural setting of the Russian Revolution also helps us understand some of the more dangerous currents in contemporary intellectual life.

Such parallels are explored in this lecture delivered by Professor Gary Saul Morson, entitled "Russian Lessons from 1917." Dr. Morson is the Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities, as well as Professor of Slavic Literature and Languages at Northwestern University in Chicago. A scholar of far ranging interests, including literary theory, the history of ideas and authors like Chekhov, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Dr. Morson's books include Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on his Work (University of Chicago Press, 1986); Anna Karenina in Our Time: Seeing More Wisely (Yale, 2007); and, with Ivan Grave, Prosaics and Other Provocations: Empathy, Open Time and the Novel (Academic Studies Press, 2013). He is also a frequent contributor to the New Criterion, Commentary and other journals.