We take our first step beyond WWI this week – remembering all the while that we will be briefly dipping back into the era of the war – to 1917, Russia’s Revolutionary year and the beginning of a long process of revolution that will last until 1929. This week we will be focusing on the Russia Revolution from its beginnings in February 1917, through the Bolshevik power grab in October of that year, continuing through Russia’s subsequent Civil War, and ending with the power struggle between Joseph Stalin and other powerful Bolshevik leaders for control over the party in the years after the death of the Vladimir Lenin. We will end with lecture in 1929 on the eve of Stalin’s first major set of reforms – reforms that forever changed Russia and the world. Later in the semester, we will pick up the story of Russia after 1929 as its long revolution gives way to the nightmarish totalitarian dictatorship of Stalin, perhaps the most murderous man in all of human history. As we move through the lecture this week, keep in mind the underlying tragedy of the events of the Russia Revolution. It was a movement that began with a popular call for liberation from an oppressive tsarist regime and ended with a far more oppressive and fanatical totalitarian state.