HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-21T10:46:04.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Why does Putin blame this infamous Russian revolutionary for Ukraine’s independence?
items: Hotel Lux: the guesthouse of world revolution
items: Why did the Soviet Union adopt the hammer and sickle, and how did it become a symbol of communist revolution?
items: Josef Stalin: the paranoid dictator who forged the Soviet Union into a superpower
items: The West’s attempt to crush Bolshevik Russia
items: The death of Lenin, a century on: the long afterlife of Russia’s pre-emiment revolutionary
items: Britain’s Russian fiasco: Allied intervention in the Russian civil war
items: Russia's Civil War: why the 1917 uprisings descended into disaster
items: Antony Beevor on the Russian revolution
items: Are revolutions doomed to failure?

Why does Putin blame this infamous Russian revolutionary for Ukraine’s independence?
type: item
date: 2026-03-21T10:45:29.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: More than a century after the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin’s decision to organise the Soviet state around national republics continues to shape political arguments about Ukraine
encoded: When Vladimir Putin speaks about the origins of the war in Ukraine, he often reaches back into history for his justifications. In speeches and essays, the Russian president has repeatedly argued that modern Ukraine is an artificial construct that was effectively created by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution of 1917 – and above all by their leader, Vladimir Lenin. According to this interpretation, Ukraine has never been a serious, distinct nation from Russia, but a political idea that emerged when the new Soviet regime reorganised the territories of the former Russian Empire into a federation of republics. In Putin’s view, by granting Ukraine formal status as a Soviet republic, Lenin unintentionally laid the groundwork for Ukrainian independence decades later. It’s a disputed version of history, to say the least. Read more | Why does Putin think Ukraine should be Russian? It’s partly to do with the Vikings Many historians argue that Ukrainian cultural and political identity long predated the Soviet Union. Ideas of a distinct Ukrainian language, culture and political community had been developing since at least the 19th century, alongside nationalist movements across Europe. But it’s impossible to understand Putin’s version of history without coming back to Lenin. Historian Dr Lara Douds reflected on Lenin’s life and legacy on the HistoryExtra podcast – and explained how he’s become Putin’s bogeyman. Lenin’s revolution “The boy who would become Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in a provincial town in the Russian Empire,” explains Douds. The town was Simbirsk, about 400 miles east of Moscow on the Volga river. Simbirsk was a modest administrative town in the interior of the empire, far removed from the political centres of St Petersburg and Moscow. At the time of Lenin’s birth, the Russian Empire was one of the largest political entities in world history. It stretched from eastern Europe across Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. Its political system remained …

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Hotel Lux: the guesthouse of world revolution
type: item
date: 2025-01-08T07:00:08.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Maurice J Casey explores the history of a Moscow hotel that hosted revolutionaries from every corner of the world in the years following the Bolshevik Revolution
encoded: History is often told through the epic struggles of famous personalities or grand movements. Yet sometimes the voices of ordinary people break through. In this episode, Maurice J Casey speaks to Danny Bird about his new book, Hotel Lux, which follows three connected families through the upheavals of the 20th century. Bound by idealism, friendship and love, their journey begins in 1920s Moscow, inside a hotel that was once a sanctuary for international revolutionaries drawn to the Soviet Union’s bold vision for a better world. Maurice J Casey is the author of Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals (Footnote Press, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon

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Why did the Soviet Union adopt the hammer and sickle, and how did it become a symbol of communist revolution?
type: item
date: 2024-08-07T14:50:50.000Z
creator: Danny Bird
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Communism
subject: Evergreen
description: The hammer and sickle is one of the modern world’s most recognisable symbols. It instantly evokes the former Soviet Union and communism. For some people around the globe, it remains a beacon of hope for a better tomorrow. But for others it is a painful reminder of totalitarian oppression and terror. What’s the history behind this revolutionary symbol?
encoded: What is the hammer and sickle? The symbol of the hammer and sickle is typically presented in a two-dimensional format, with the hammer crossed over the curved blade of the sickle (a tool traditionally used for harvesting crops, which has a curved metal blade often set on top of a wooden handle). A red star often – though not always – appears just above the tip of the sickle. The hammer represents the working class engaged in industrial production, who, according to Marxist theory, are destined to overthrow the bourgeoisie, the dominant social class under capitalism. The sickle denotes the peasantry, the toilers of the land. Though the symbol denotes solidarity between agricultural and industrial workers, the 19th-century philosopher Karl Marx, whose works were foundational to the beliefs of Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks, had dismissed the peasantry as a vestige, leftover by the epoch that had preceded capitalism: feudalism. Marx regarded peasants as an instinctively conservative class that would likely prove hostile to a workers’ revolution. The adoption of a visual expression of unity between worker and peasant shows the Bolsheviks’ adaption of Marxism to their homeland’s specific circumstances, referencing the socio-economic reality of Russia, which was still a predominantly agrarian society with little industrial development, at the time of the October Revolution in 1917. When did the hammer and sickle first appear? In early 1918, Lenin and Anatoly Lunacharsky – head of the regime’s Commissariat for Education (known as ‘Narkompros’) – launched a competition for artists and designers to create an official seal for the nascent Soviet state. The entries were a diverse assortment that spanned everything from striking avant-garde forms, classical imagery such as overflowing cornucopias, and even a double-headed eagle shorn of its feathers and regalia (the double-headed eagle had been adopted centuries before by the Russian tsars to symbolise their link to a…

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Josef Stalin: the paranoid dictator who forged the Soviet Union into a superpower
type: item
date: 2024-07-25T12:11:21.000Z
creator: Danny Bird
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Communism
subject: Evergreen
description: Stalin is widely regarded as one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in history. From his childhood in the Caucasus to his career as a Bolshevik revolutionary, Robert Service explores his life and explains why he was constantly underestimated by his contemporaries
encoded: Josef Stalin was the longest-serving leader of the world’s first socialist state, the Soviet Union, one of the principal architects of the postwar order and among the most ruthless tyrants to have ever lived. Undoubtedly, he was one of the 20th century’s most consequential figures. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Robert Service explains how the young Stalin had been seduced by revolutionary ideals of the age and ultimately joined the network of Marxists operating both inside and outside the territories ruled over by the tsar. As a Bolshevik, he played a key role during the events of the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin ultimately emerged as the Soviet Union’s de facto leader, confounding those around him who had misjudged his political acumen. During the 1930s, his Five-Year plans drastically altered the socioeconomic makeup of the USSR at a terrible human cost. His innate paranoia then instigated a bloody purge of his one-time comrades in the Communist Party as he sought to consolidate his grip on power. Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 marked the most vulnerable point in his dictatorship. Nevertheless, allied with Britain and America, the Soviet dictator would play a major role in reshaping the world following the defeat of Hitler’s regime in 1945. By the time of his death in 1953, Stalinism – the ideology synonymous with his approach to statecraft and culture – had transformed the Soviet Union into a superpower. But not without cost: estimated tens of millions had perished due to his decisions. This would ensure his criticism by successors. Where and when was Stalin born? Josef Stalin was born as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili in Gori, Georgia on 18 December 1878. Located in the mountainous Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian seas, Georgia was part of the Russian empire at the time. However, some sources specify that he was born in 1879. Stalin preferred to “stay fairly quiet about…

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The West’s attempt to crush Bolshevik Russia
type: item
date: 2024-04-22T07:22:23.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Anna Reid discusses how armies from Britain, France, America and Japan invaded Russia during the First World War in a bid to topple the Bolsheviks
encoded: Following the October Revolution of 1917, Russia's nascent Bolshevik regime acted on its word to take the country out of the First World War by brokering peace with Germany. Speaking to Danny Bird, Anna Reid explains how this prompted Britain, France, America and Japan to launch a joint 'intervention', by invading the vast terrain of the crumbling Russian empire in support of anti-Bolshevik forces. View Green Video on the source website

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The death of Lenin, a century on: the long afterlife of Russia’s pre-emiment revolutionary
type: item
date: 2024-01-21T08:05:28.000Z
creator: Danny Bird
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Trends-Anniversary
description: Lenin was a towering in figure in life, but in death he became larger still. Danny Bird explores the final months of Lenin’s life, the long debate over what to do with his body, and long tail of his legacy over Russia
encoded: Born on 22 April 1870 as Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, Lenin was raised within a comfortable, cultured family in the Russian provincial city of Simbirsk. Later, he would become the architect of the Soviet state and the leader of the Bolshevik party, who shot to global attention as the driving force behind the October Revolution of 1917. Most of Lenin’s adult life was spent living in Western Europe. There, he fostered ties with fellow revolutionaries and cultivated his interpretation of Marxism. Central to Lenin’s ideology was the need for a ‘vanguard’ of professional revolutionaries to guide the working class towards the destruction of capitalism and the dawn of socialism. His decisive role in the Russian Revolution came during the febrile months following the collapse of the Romanov monarchy in March 1917. A provisional government of liberal politicians replaced the ousted tsar, Nicholas II. Read more | The last days of the Romanovs Little more than a fortnight earlier, workers and soldiers in the capital, Petrograd (now St Petersburg) established a representative council to advance their demands – a council known as a ‘soviet’. Lenin’s moment came in April 1917, when he returned to Russia and exclaimed: “All power to the soviets!” to a jubilant crowd that greeted him in the city. Against the prevailing opinion of his comrades, Lenin persuaded the Bolsheviks to overthrow the Provisional Government and seize power that autumn. The result was the founding of the world’s first ‘socialist state’, Soviet Russia. A brutal civil war then engulfed the former Russian empire. The Bolshevik regime eventually emerged triumphant, and, in December 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was born. At the same time, however, the health of the Soviet state’s founder was beginning to fail. Lenin’s death: how did he die? Lenin died of a stroke aged 53 on 21 January 1924 in the village of Gorki, to the south of Moscow. His comrade, Nikolai Bukharin, witnessed the death and later wrote…

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Britain’s Russian fiasco: Allied intervention in the Russian civil war
type: item
date: 2023-06-26T15:39:42.000Z
creator: Nick Hewitt
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: More than a century ago, British troops were engaged in the maelstrom of the Russian civil war. Their campaign against the Bolsheviks, writes Nick Hewitt, was a bloody debacle that enraged a restive public back home
encoded: In 2018, the world marked the centenary of the armistice that ended the First World War. But for thousands of British soldiers, the fighting went on. On 11 November 1918, Thomas Dunlop, from Newton Heath, was part of a 400-strong garrison shivering in improvised trenches around Tulgas, north Russia. As Dunlop’s comrades-in-arms on the western front laid down their weapons, the 19-year-old private in 2/10th Battalion, the Royal Scots, was in a vicious firefight with 2,500 Bolsheviks, supported by gunboats. For four days Dunlop’s company, alongside American riflemen and a few Canadian field guns, defended their nondescript piece of Russia. The Bolsheviks finally withdrew, leaving hundreds of dead behind, but victory came at a price. US sergeant Silver Parrish recalled how “we licked the Bolo [Bolshevik] good and hard but lost seven killed and 14 wounded, and the Canadians lost quite a few and the Royal Scots lost 36 men”. In context: The Russian civil war The Bolshevik Revolution of 7 November 1917 was followed by a wave of armed insurrections across the former Russian empire by anti-Bolshevik factions loosely characterised as ‘White’ Russians. At the height of the civil war the Whites appeared to surround the Bolshevik strongholds of Moscow and Petrograd, but in reality they were a disparate group of moderate socialists, ethnic nationalists, Romanov loyalists, proto-dictators and bandits, and never really formed an effective opposition. In Siberia the Whites were led by their self-proclaimed ‘supreme leader’, the former tsarist naval officer Admiral Alexander Kolchak. The Allied intervention in north Russia was partly intended to link up with Kolchak, but his regime was corrupt and unpopular and he lost the support of his most formidable force of 40,000 former Czech and Slovak prisoners of war and deserters, known as ‘the Czechoslovak Legion’. Kolchak was captured by the Bolsheviks and executed. Around the Baltic coast, Estonians and Latvians were fighting for indepe…

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Russia's Civil War: why the 1917 uprisings descended into disaster
type: item
date: 2022-09-05T04:54:31.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: With the world’s attention fixed firmly on the invasion of Ukraine, Antony Beevor’s new history of Russia’s 1917 revolutions and subsequent civil war is especially timely. He explains to Rob Attar how the fall of the last tsar launched a chain of events leading to millions of deaths and one of history’s most brutal dictatorships
encoded: Revolution and civil war: in context The Russian Revolution was actually two revolutions. The first began when the last tsar, Nicholas II, was toppled in March 1917, brought down by a combination of food shortages, Russia’s disastrous performance in the First World War and his personal failings. With his fall, Russia seemed set for a democratic future but, until elections could be held, the country was ruled by a Provisional Government dominated by liberals from the tsarist-era Duma (parliament). The Provisional Government, its effectiveness hampered by a lack of legitimacy, faced a powerful rival in the shape of the socialist-led Petrograd Soviet that ruled the country’s then-capital city (now called St Petersburg). The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, sought to undermine the Provisional Government, which itself made a series of missteps – notably continued failures in the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Capitalising on these weaknesses, the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Leon Trotsky launched a coup d’état, the so-called October Revolution, seizing power with relative ease. Consolidating that power proved far more difficult, as a combination of opponents – ranging from former tsarist generals to other leftwing political groups who distrusted the Bolsheviks – took up arms against them. The stage was set for a civil war between the Bolshevik Red Army and their “White” enemies that devastated the country and led to millions of deaths. Several international powers also contributed troops and supplies to the conflict, predominantly to the Bolsheviks’ opponents. In 1919, White armies led by Generals Kolchak and Denikin launched offensives that seemed set to destroy the fledgling communist regime, but the Red Army managed to repel them. Following those triumphs the Bolsheviks were eventually able to achieve ultimate victory, though fighting continued for many more months. Rob Attar: Most of your previous books have focused on the Second World War. What made you de…

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Antony Beevor on the Russian revolution
type: item
date: 2022-05-25T10:34:12.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Military historian Antony Beevor discusses his new book Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921
encoded: Bestselling military historian Antony Beevor discusses his new book Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921. In conversation with Rob Attar, he delves into the two revolutions that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and brought the Bolsheviks to power, and then examines the bloody civil war that ultimately consolidated communist control. Antony Beevor is the author of Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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Are revolutions doomed to failure?
type: item
date: 2021-07-16T08:44:12.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Victorian
subject: Period
subject: Communism
description: After the end of communist rule in eastern Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union, many observers suggested that revolutions never really achieve their objectives. But how do we judge the long-term outcome of such endeavours - and have any been truly successful? Six historians debate the legacies of major revolts and uprisings
encoded: Charles Townshend Revolution has meant many things – except perhaps its literal meaning: a full-circle return to a previous state. In the modern world it has meant change, usually dramatic and rapid, often accelerated by violence. It has been applied to sudden seizures of power, but also to vast processes such as industrialisation and technological development. (The United States even called its development of so-called ‘smart weapons’ the Revolution in Military Affairs.) Variations in meaning bear directly on the issue of success or failure. In ‘palace revolutions’ (sometimes mistakenly labelled coups d’état), in which one general might seize power from another, the issue has been resolved after a short military clash. But such revolutions cause little change, beyond that of the Swiss bank account into which the proceeds of political power are transferred. Revolutions that have attempted to transform whole societies – the great French, Russian and Chinese uprisings – have far-reaching, complex and maybe contradictory effects that work themselves out over very long periods of time. Because of this, success and failure can be hard to calibrate. Did the French Revolution fail? That’s certainly what Beethoven thought when he struck out the dedication of his Eroica symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte – but Bonaparte was a child of the revolution, and his dictatorship was a world away from the Bourbon monarchy. After the revolution, power derived from the nation, not God; democracy was built into it. Though many French people today see the revolution as a bloodstained disaster, they still hold to the ‘republican values’ it established. A century ago, the Irish revolution promised not just to free Ireland from British rule, but to remake it as a new Gaelic society. This carried a price: partition, confining independence to 26 out of 32 Irish counties. Yet its centrepiece, the revival of the language, was never achieved, even if it still complicates the politics of Northern Ire…

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