Here, then, were the roots of the monarchy's collapse, not in peasant discontent or the labour movement, so long the preoccupation of Marxist and social historians, nor in the breakaway of nationalist movements on the empire's periphery, but in the growing conflict between a dynamic public culture and a fossilized autocracy that would not concede or even understand its political demands.

Orlando Figes [Home] Orlando Figes [Home]

All the main components of Lenin's ideology—his stress on the need for a disciplined ‘vanguard'; his belief that action (the ‘subjective factor') could alter the objective course of history (and in particular that the seizure of the state apparatus could bring about a social revolution); his defence of terror and dictatorship; his contempt for liberals and democrats (and indeed for socialists who compromised with them)—stemmed not just from Marx but from Tkachev and the People's Will. He injected a distinctly Russian dose of conspiratorial politics into a Marxist dialectic that would otherwise have remained passive—tied down by a willingness to wait for the revolution to mature through the development of objective conditions rather than bringing it about through political action. It was not Marxism that made Lenin a revolutionary but Lenin who made Marxism revolutionary. Orlando Figes's latest book is The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture. This combination was the key to the success of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. In the Constituent Assembly elections of November 1917, the first democratic elections in the country's history, 71 per cent of the Ukrainian peasants would vote for the nationalists—an astonishing shift in political awareness in only a generation. The movement organized the peasants in their struggle against foreign (mainly Russian and Polish) landowners and against the ‘foreign influence' of the towns (dominated by the Russians, Jews and Poles). It is no coincidence that peasant uprisings erupted first, in 1902, in those regions around Poltava province where the Ukrainian nationalist movement was also most advanced. National Theatre announce new Season to Jan 2012". London Theatre. 8 June 2016 . Retrieved 6 September 2022.Books: A People’s Tragedy: the Russian Revolution 1891-1924, Natasha’s Dance: a Cultural History of Russia, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: the Language and Symbols of 1917, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia Here is a short extract of a 40-minute seminar I had with the students of the International School of Toulouse. The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture, New York: Henry Holt and Co. 2019, ISBN 9781627792141

War and the Russian Revolution : Orlando Figes The Great War and the Russian Revolution : Orlando Figes

Lccn 2013042580 Ocr tesseract 5.2.0-1-gc42a Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9811 Ocr_module_version 0.0.18 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA401771 Openlibrary_edition Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991 (Pelican, 2014) draws from several of Figes’ previous books on the Russian Revolution and Soviet history. It argues that - although it changed in form and character - the Russian Revolution should be understood as a single cycle of 100 years, from the famine crisis of 1891 until the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991. In 1894, the country's most progressive zemstvo leaders presented a list of political demands to Nicholas II on his accession to the throne, following the premature death of his father, Alexander III. They wanted to convene a national assembly to involve the zemstvos in the work of government. In a speech that infuriated public opinion Nicholas denounced such ‘senseless dreams' and emphasized his ‘firm and unflinching' adherence to the ‘principle of autocracy' which he had sworn to uphold in his coronation oath. The Tsar's sovereignty was absolute, unlimited by laws or parliaments, by bureaucrats or public opinion, and his personal rule was guided only by his conscience before God. a b "Four Documentaries – The Tsar's Last Picture Show". BBC. 22 November 2007 . Retrieved 31 August 2011.And this is the starting point of Orlando Figes’s The Story of Russia: “Russia is a country held together by ideas rooted in its distant past,” he tells us in the introduction. “Histories continuously reconfigured and repurposed to suit its present needs and reimagine its future.” urn:lcp:revolutionaryrus0000fige:lcpdf:0d4d1e53-7a0c-44d3-aedc-98ed7a2e76b2 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier revolutionaryrus0000fige Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2c0qb188jw Invoice 1652 Isbn 9780805091311 Russian History". Brill Publishers. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014 . Retrieved 31 August 2011. On 4 December 2008, the St Petersburg offices of the Memorial Society were raided by the police. The entire electronic archive of Memorial in St Petersburg, including the materials collected with Figes for The Whisperers, was confiscated by the authorities. Figes condemned the police raid, accusing the Russian authorities of trying to rehabilitate the Stalinist regime. [46] Figes organised an open protest letter to President Dmitry Medvedev and other Russian leaders, which was signed by several hundred leading academics from across the world. [47] After several court hearings, the materials were finally returned to Memorial in May 2009.

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History: Written by Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History: Written by

In 2023 Figes' debut play, The Oyster Problem, was produced by the Jermyn Street Theatre in London. The play is about the financial crisis of the writer Gustave Flaubert in the last years of his life and the attempts of his literary friends, George Sand, Emile Zola and Ivan Turgenev, to find him a sinecure. Bob Barrett played the part of Flaubert and Philip Wilson directed. [51] Everything Theatre described The Oyster Problem as "a remarkable pearl of a play; a patchwork of anecdotes that welcomes us into the private life of Gustave Flaubert and his literary contemporaries" [52] Film and television work [ edit ] Another strand, exploited through the centuries by successive rulers to enhance their authority, is the idea of spiritual exceptionalism. It was Ivan the Terrible, no less, who adapted Byzantine rituals to create an imperial myth – that the tsar was anointed by church and god, and that Moscow was the Third Rome, the rightful successor and true capital of Christendom after the fall of Rome and Constantinople. In this elegant and incisive account, Orlando Figes offers an illuminating new perspective on the Russian Revolution. While other historians have focused their examinations on the cataclysmic years immediately before and after 1917, Figes shows how the revolution, while it changed in form and character, nevertheless retained the same idealistic goals throughout, from its origins in the famine crisis of 1891 until its end with the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991. Until the very end of the Soviet system, its leaders believed they were carrying out the revolution Lenin had begun.

His book The Whisperers followed the approach of oral history. In partnership with the Memorial Society, a human rights non-profit organisation, Figes gathered several hundred private family archives from homes across Russia and carried out more than a thousand interviews with survivors as well as perpetrators of the Stalinist repressions. [23] Housed in the Memorial Society in Moscow, St Petersburg and Perm, many of these valuable research materials are available online. [24] Makers of their own tragedy". The Independent. 23 October 2011. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022.

Russia by Orlando Figes review - The Guardian The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes review - The Guardian

Figes was the historical consultant on the film Anna Karenina (2012), directed by Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. [20] He was also credited as the historical consultant on the 2016 BBC War & Peace television series directed by Tom Harper with a screenplay by Andrew Davies. Interviewed by the Sunday Telegraph, Figes defended the series against criticism that it was "too Jane Austen" and "too English". [54] Theatrical adaptations [ edit ] Antonio Delgado Prize (Spain), The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture [61] Orlando Figes gana el Premio Antonio Delgado a la Divulgación de la Propiedad Intelectual". Sgae.es. 3 December 2018 . Retrieved 13 May 2022. Writing in the Financial Times, Simon Sebag Montefiore called Just Send Me Word "a unique contribution to Gulag scholarship as well as a study of the universal power of love". [33] Several reviewers highlighted the book's literary qualities, pointing out that it 'reads like a novel' [34] [35] Presenting a new perspective on the Russian Revolution, a noted historian traces three generational phases to show how the revolution, while it changed in form and character, retained the same idealistic goals throughoutThe Sino-Soviet split took place during this phase of the revolution, with the catalyst being a speech Khruschev made on the 40th anniversary of the October revolution. He asserted that the USSR would overtake the US in industrial output within 15 years, a proclamation that goaded a suddenly competitive Mao Zedong into saying the same would apply to China overtaking Britain in the same way over the same period. Magnificent. Beautifully written, immaculately researched and thoroughly absorbing from start to finish. A tour de force that explains how Europe's cultural life transformed during the course of the 19th century - and so much more." (Peter Frankopan) The Church retained a powerful hold over rural Russia, in particular. In many villages the priest was one of the few people who could read and write. Through parish schools the Orthodox clergy taught children to show loyalty, deference and obedience, not just to their elders and betters but also to the Tsar and his officials.