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Russia After Communism

What is Russia’s place in the world now? And what does the turbulence of the last 25 years tell us about where it is heading?

The USSR in the Cold War Years

After Stalin’s death in 1953, successive leaders tried to find ways to revitalise the Soviet regime and rethink its promises to the Soviet people. Life within a system no longer based on terror and intense industrial transformation offered citizens strange alternatives.

The Age of Tyrants: Sappho via Gounod's Opera

This lecture uncovers what we know about the ‘real Sappho’, an aristocrat who lived between 630 and 570 BCE on the island of Lesbos and socialised in the lavish courts of upstart tyrants.

Lenin and the Russian Revolution

How, as a Marxist, did he justify the seizure of power and would the October Revolution have been possible without him? How in this centenary year, are these events being commemorated in Putin’s Russia?

The February Revolution in Russia

To mark the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the dilemmas of modern empire and monarchy will be discussed, firstly in general terms and then specifically in terms of Russia.