The 1917/2017 Symposium: First Decades, Global Reverberations

By Cassia Smith

Over the course of the fall semester, the European Union Center joined other campus units in sponsoring the Ten Days That Shook the World event series, which highlighted revolution past and present. In early November, this series featured a symposium titled "First Decades, Global Reverberations" that explored these topics with a focus on the aftereffects of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The keynote, delivered by Professor Boris Kolinitskii of the European University at Saint Petersburg, brought the topic to the present. Titled "100 Years Later: Memories of the Revolution in Contemporary Russia," it focused on how the memory of the 1917 revolution functioned in contemporary Russian politics and culture. You can read an in-depth write-up of the keynote by Slavic Languages and Literatures PhD student Marija Fedjanina on REEC's blog. The symposium itself took a more global and varied approach to the topic, considering the effects of the 1917 revolution on Brazil, South Asia, and the current labor movement, among other topics. You can read a summary of the symposium presentations on REEEC's blog as well, written by Lucy Pakhnyuk, an MA student in REEES, and Nadia Hoppe, a PhD student in Slavic Languages and Literatures.