Daily schedule
After registration on Sunday afternoon, we invite you to a welcome meeting in the Amersi Lecture Theatre in New Quad, where you will meet your tutors. Join us in Deer Park afterwards for our opening drinks reception, followed by dinner in Brasenose’s historic dining hall (informal dress).
Seminars take place on weekday mornings. Most afternoons are free, allowing you time to explore Oxford, enjoy a variety of optional social events (see details below), or to sit back and relax in one of the college's atmospheric quads.
Your course culminates on Friday evening with a closing drinks reception and gala farewell dinner at which Certificates of Attendance are awarded. For this special occasion smart dress is encouraged (no requirement to wear dinner suits or gowns).
Social programme
We warmly invite all Inspiring Oxford students to take part in our optional social programme, with all events provided at no additional cost. Events are likely to include:
- Croquet on the quad
- Chauffeured punting from Magdalen Bridge
- Expert-led walking tours of Oxford
- Optional visit to an Oxford Library or the Ashmolean Museum
- River Thames afternoon cruise
- Quiz night in the college bar
- Scottish country dance evening (where you do the dancing!)
Seminars
Monday
From the 1905 Revolution to WWI
In our opening sessions we will look at the condition of the Russian Empire on the eve of the failed 1905 Revolution. This will include a study of the ruling Romanov dynasty and Russian imperialist expansion, the attempts at political reform under Tsar Alexander II, and the impact of his assassination.
We will look at the causes and consequences of the 1905 revolution, including the establishment of its first parliament (the Duma) and the reforms that followed, and the development of Russia as an industrial power. Lastly, we will see how Russia was drawn into the First World War as a key player, and the military and economic disaster that followed.
Tuesday
The Revolutions of 1917
The military and economic impacts of the First World War, as well as the dangerous influence of the faith healer Rasputin, led to the discontent that erupted into the February Revolution of 1917. Today we will explore why the revolution occurred, and the complex events that followed.
These include the conflict between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, the return to Russia of the Bolshevik leader Lenin, and the emergence of Trotsky as a key partner, leading to the October Revolution of 1917. We will see how Russia briefly became one of the most socially liberal countries in the world, a socialist utopian experiment. We will also look at Eisenstein’s famous 1928 film ‘October’, and its depiction of the Bolshevik revolution.
Wednesday
From Civil War to the Rise of Stalin
Lenin’s coup in October 1917 led to a disastrous peace treaty with Germany, the crushing of socialist opposition, and then a terrible Civil War. This saw the Bolshevik’s bloody murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1918. The world revolution that Lenin expected never came and, following a failed assassination attempt in 1918, he suffered a series of strokes and died in 1924. Today we will look at those events, the attempts at social and economic reform, and the leadership struggle that followed Lenin’s death, leading to the expulsion of Trotsky from the Communist Party, and the unexpected emergence of Stalin as sole leader, of the USSR.
Thursday
From Five Year Plans to the Great Terror
Following years of war, Russia was in a disastrous economic position by 1928. Today we look at how Stalin consolidated his power, and how he attempted to rapidly industrialise the Soviet Union through the calamitous policy of collectivization and his series of Five Year Plans which brought about famine in Ukraine.
Potential opposition to Stalin led to the infamous ‘Show Trials’ of the 1930s, in which many of Stalin’s former comrades, the ‘Old Bolsheviks’, were found guilty of treasonous activities and imprisoned or executed. This was also the period of the rise of Fascism in Europe, and we will look at Germany and the Spanish Civil War, and the extraordinary pact Stalin made with the Nazis in August 1939, leading to their carve up of Poland, and to WWII.
Friday
From the Great Patriotic War to the Cold War
On our final day we look at Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, and how it almost ended in disaster for Stalin. We examine the turning point at Stalingrad, and Russia’s victory in the 'Great Patriotic War.’ This then takes us into the first years of the Cold War, a period that sees the Berlin Airlift, Russia’s development of atomic weapons and ‘High Stalinism.’
Stalin died suddenly in 1953 and we end our course by examining the immediate repercussions in the period of the brief thaw and ‘destalinization’ that followed.
