This statue of Lenin stands proudly in a dramatic action pose in front of the Smolny Institute from where Lenin directed the Bolshevik seizure of power on the night of 25/26 October (5/6 November according to the European calendar) 1917.  There were no such dramatic poses that night for Lenin, just sitting behind a desk issuing orders, pacing the Bolshevik offices and anxiously awaiting reports from throughout Petrograd to see if the Bolshevik gamble had succeeded.

• Read chapter 24, especially the section on the Russian Revolution, and chapter 25, especially the section "The Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin."
• Read my remarks on the Russian Revolutions of 1917, then the period of NEP in the 1920s followed by Stalin's revolution in the 1930s.
  
• Read my additonal note on 1917.
• Study the Questions to Consider and the Key Terms for the week.
• Post (or respond) your thoughts/ideas about this unit's reading and assignment in the Blackboard online discussion forum. Do not post your assignment there.
• Submit the Web paper.

• Listen to some further information about this unit as a mp3 file.  You can also read the information as a txt file.
• Check out this website on the situation of the large Jewish population in the Russian Empire, Beyond the Pale: The History of Jews in Russia.

• See the videos dealing with the Russian Revolution in the HIS 242 course.
• For extra credit please suggest to your instructor a relevant video for this unit of the course. Send the title of the video, the url and a brief explanation of why you find the video interesting and applicable to the material that is being studied in this unit.

• Take the short 5-point quiz for chapter 25. Log into Blackboard and look under "Chapter Quizzes." You have five minutes to complete each quiz (multiple-choice questions).
• Write a one-page paper (maybe two pages if they are exceptional) that provides a detailed comparison of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Russian Declaration of the Rights of the Russian People for a maximum of 50 points.
• Read John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World (free at www.bartleby.com/79/) and explain Reed's explanation of why the Bolsheviks were able to seize power successfully for a maximum of 50 points (one or two pages).
• For 25 points maximum extra credit, read the Franco-Russian Alliance Military Convention (1992), and write a paragraph that answers the question, How did this convention fit into the pre-1914 diplomatic scene?
• For 25 points maximum extra credit, read a newspaper account of the Kishinev pogrom and write a paragraph explaining the impact of the pogrom on Kishinev.
• For extra credit of a maximum of 10 points, you can submit the answers to the Russian Declaration of the Rights of the Russian People study questions.  Please write in formal, complete sentences.
• For extra credit, please suggest a relevant website for this unit of the course.  Send the title of the site, the url and a brief explanation why you find the information interesting and applicable to the material being studied this unit.