The February Revolution in Russia - Professor Dominic Lieven

Dominic Lieven (born 19 January 1952) is a research professor at Cambridge University (Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College) and a Fellow of the British Academy and of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Dominic Lieven on researching pre-1914 Russia and winning the Pushkin House Prize (Trinity College, Cambridge):

It nearly ruined his eyesight but Professor Dominic Lieven was determined to complete his research in Moscow’s crumbling archives. His efforts were rewarded with the 2016 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize for Towards the Flame. Empire, War and the end of Tsarist Russia (Penguin).

Professor Lieven, Senior Research Fellow at Trinity and a Fellow of the British Academy, remembers struggling to access materials about Russia’s pre-Revolutionary elite as a PhD student living in Leningrad and Moscow in the 1970s.

Several decades later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow’s diplomatic and military archives were opened up. This was the ‘last frontier’ for a historian of the First World War’s origins, says Professor Lieven.

Video Title: The February Revolution in Russia – Professor Dominic Lieven. Source: Gresham College. Date Published: March 10, 2017. Description:

The dilemmas of modern empire and monarchy will be discussed, firstly in general terms and then specifically in terms of Russia. What were the key challenges facing Nicholas II and why was he unable to meet them, both in the domestic and international contexts. The lecture will explain how the effects of Russia’s involvement in the First World War firstly undermined all support for the monarchy and led to its sudden collapse in February 1917, and subsequently allowed the Bolsheviks to overthrow the Provisional Government so easily eight months later.