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Russian Revolution at 100

Military parade on the 15th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, with a Red Army Detachment passing the Lenin Mausoleum, 1933. Lenin's preserved body has been on public display there since shortly after his death in 1924.

It was one of the defining moments of the 20th century with repercussions up to the present day. On this River to River program, we remember the Russian Revolution one hundred years ago. Drake University historian and native Russian Natalie Bayer and University of Iowa political scientist Bill Reisinger join the conversation.  They talk through the fall of the Tsarist autocracy and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.  It's a story that threads through to the present day in Putin’s Russia. 

Bayer says that although individual Russians might be marking the 100th anniversary, it is not being commemorated by the Russian government.  

"People are divided.  'Revolution' is not a fashionable concept in Russia.  And talking about Putin and his ideas, what he's putting forward is the idea of order and stability, and so revolution is not one of those concepts—with the radical disruption of reality and the tradition—he or the state would support," Bayer says.

Ben Kieffer is the host of IPR's River to River