History of Russia
History of Russia
by Professor Adrian Kerr
Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area and has over 144 million people. Its influence on global affairs has been immense, its pivotal role in the first and second world wars, the Iron Curtain, the Cuban missile crisis, the collapse of the USSR and now the rise of Putin and his global ambitions.
The medieval Viking states of Rus' arose in the 9th century, but the Rus' ultimately disintegrated into several smaller states when most of their lands were overrun by the Mongols in the13th century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of the Kievan Rus'. Kiev and Moscow adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that define Russian culture.
By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire stretching from Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus in the west to Alaska in the east.
We will discuss the impact of Russia's most notable and famous Tzars from Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great down to the last Tzar Nicholas 2. We will also review the roles of Lenin and Stalin in creating the USSR and the failed attempts of the Ukraine and Belarus to break away at that time. We will end with the rise of Putin and his ambition of building a Greater Russia by military means: Chechnya (2000) Georgia (2008) Ukraine (2014 and again in 2022), where will it end?
Wednesday, April 17th
10:00 am to 11:30 am
$25 per person
Min of 10
No cancellations after April 10th
|
|