Russia

The Russian civilization traces its beginning to around 862 AD when a Varangian (i.e. Viking) prince named Rurik was "invited" to rule the city of Novgorod. The resulting civilization was centered upon the city of Kiev, in modern-day Ukraine, hence the name "Kievan Rus."

On 7 November 1917 (25 October under the old Russian calendar, hence the term "October Revolution"), Vladimir Lenin led his Bolshevik party against the Provisional Government which had been in power since the February Revolution. The Bolsheviks took over the government with comparative ease, and instituted "Soviet power" over those parts of Russia they controlled.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, (in Russian, Soyuz Sov'etskikh Sotsialistícheskikh Respublik) better known to the West as the "Soviet Union" was established by the Bolsheviks in 1922 as a confederation of nominally independent socialist republics.

• In RUS Lecture 1, we met the Russians as they were when the DYT was a college student, and the DYT did his best to answer an unanticipated but very enjoyable barrage of questions about life in today's Russia.
• In RUS Lecture 2, the origins of the Russian state were discussed, along with the importance of religion, the necessity of a clear line of succession, and the first stirrings of imperialism.
• In RUS Lecture 3, we will encounter the earlier, rather ineffectual, Romanovs and and watch their brilliant successors Peter The Great and Catherine The Great unleash a ball of confusion.
• In RUS Lecture 4, after pausing briefly on Russia's apogee as a superpower and as an autocracy, we will examine the conflict between internal reform and the Russian version of the Mos Maiorum.
• In RUS Lecture 5, terror, war, and the lamentable reign of Nicholas II, will bring the Romanov dynasty and the Russian Empire to an inglorious and utterly confusing end.
• In RUS Lecture 6, the Soviet Union will be founded and win the Great Patriotic War, acquire a satellite empire, thereby setting up a Cold War, a Bipolar World and the world's first gerontocracy.
• In RUS Lecture 7, the Russians will watch the Soviet Union fall apart, try to pick up the pieces again and create a working capitalist democracy on the order of the one in this yere [United States].. good luck!
• In RUS Lecture 8, we will take a very special (and very pertinent) DETOUR drawing upon the class's ability to implement its awesome mastery of Finding Solutions for a Global Problem: The War on Terrorism with the fast-developing history being made even as this blorp is being typed.