Questions for discussion:

How can we make sense of the events of 1881? What do they tell us about the nature of Russian society and politics in the nineteenth century?

Set reading (to be prepared for class discussion):

Source: Demands of the Narodnaia Volia, in Basil Dmytryshyn (ed.), Imperial Russia: A Source Book, 1700-1917 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990), pp. 309-316. Scan available here.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, 3rd ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Extracts from Chapter 1, ‘The Setting’, pp. 15-31. Scan available here.

Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and Their Revolution, 1917-21 (New York: Oxford University Press Inc, 1996). Chapter 1, ‘Why Was Russia Revolutionary?’, pp. 11-28. E-book.

Selected further reading:

Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel, Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire (Indiana University Press, 1998).

Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West, eds., Between Tsar and People, 1st Edition edition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1991).

Ben Eklof and Stephen Frank, eds., The World of the Russian Peasant: Post-Emancipation Culture and Society, 1st edition (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990).

Barbara Alpern Engel, and Clifford N. Rosenthal, eds., Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013). E-book.

Susan K. Morrissey, Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). E-book.

David Saunders, Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform 1801-1881 (London: Longman, 1992).