For history students (and now I am brought back to my high school history class) the date has significance as the start of the
February Revolution in 1917.
Stanislavski famously described the
February Revolution as "a miraculous liberation of Russia", and spent the years of the Civil War teaching his system, and bringing performances of the classics to a new audience - including factory workers and the Red Army.
He covers American refugees, the invasion of Belgium, into the war zone, the
February revolution, the Ottoman Empire, the great crime, and Persia.
He characterizes the
February Revolution as a mutiny since legitimate authority belonged to the tsar, and the people in the streets were notoriously bloody-minded.
Many international regional solution initiatives, particularly the initiatives led by the United Nations (UN), were unsuccessful in Libya which was dragged into a crisis as a result of the coup attempted by Khalifa Haftar in May 2014 following the 2011
February Revolution. The
February Revolution was a reflection of the Arab revolutions in Libya, so the developments in Libya after the revolution were directly related to the developments in the region.
It occurs to me in considering Pasternak's contrasting of the initial days of the Russian Revolution and its promise of a better future--the
February Revolution with the later, October Revolution in which the Bolsheviks seize power with the help of various militias and irregular armed groups, one might focus on the leader of the Provisional Government.
According to the traditional view, tsarist Russia before the
February Revolution was a "focus of all the contradictions of imperialism" and had been the "weakest link" in the imperialist chain that united the world's great powers.
But I know, for example, that his "Reflections on the
February Revolution," published by the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta a decade ago, was given to Putin.
He wrote, 'from the experience of all liberation movements, it can be noted that the success of a revolution can be measured by the extent of the involvement of women in it.' Ali helpfully reminds readers that the spark for the
February Revolution was lit by women who came out into the streets demanding bread and an end to the war on the International Women's Day in 1917.
In fact, though he was entranced by the
February revolution, which was left in the dust by the Bolsheviks' tumultuous October upheaval later that year, Kustodiev's work through the rest of 1917 consisted largely of the same colorful and joyful landscapes and portraits he did before.
Everyone, the czar and his circle excepted, therefore predicted the
February Revolution. It duly occurred, and no one was astonished.