Imagining the Future in Russia’s February Revolution of 1917

A vibrant plurality of voices emerged after the collapse of tsarism in the Russian Empire and the introduction of press freedom in the spring of 1917. Twenty essays in this anthology explore a variety of newspapers and their visions of the future in response to the February Revolution. The collection takes a broad view. It features press landscapes of the metropoles of Petrograd and Moscow as well as the provincial press from across the empire, including, alongside Russian-language periodicals, newspapers in Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, Hebrew, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. The February Revolution is re-evaluated as a moment of genuine possibility, awakening hopes for a democratic future. Rather than viewing February 1917 retrospectively through the lens of the October Revolution, this volume restores the sense of openness and contingency that shaped revolutionary experiences.