Looking for the Revolution in Russia

November 7 is Something of a Big Day

statue in Russia — Is Russia’s revolution lost to tourists?
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini

The New York Times in 1917 reported that on November 7, “the Bolsheviki” had seized government buildings in what was then called Petrograd; in the same day’s paper, November 8, the Times reported that there were 10 Socialists in the New York Assembly, and that suffragists were meeting with President Woodrow Wilson seeking the adoption of an amendment allowing women to vote. One can’t help but wonder whether any of those bringing about change almost a century ago would like how it has all turned out.

Lenin in the Moscow subway Photo credit: M. Ciavardini — Lenin in the Moscow subway
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini

Russia’s history is so vast, with so many different chapters, that visitors have to look for signs of those days in 1917. They are far less prominent than I would have thought they would be. The place where I really find tribute to those times is, interestingly enough, in the Moscow subway, the means of transport for working people, who, of course, are those the Russian revolutionaries were exalting.

—Lori Tripoli