Choosing posts for the slider this week was a challenge as there were many excellent options. This week’s submissions covered topics ranging from the career of Sergei Witte and the increasing social tensions that emerged in the wake of the state’s modernization campaign, to Lenin’s ideology, the Russo-Japanese War, Bloody Sunday, Father Gapon,The October Manifesto, the SRs, and the Stolypin Reforms. The discussions in the comments, especially on topics several of you had studied (The October Manifesto and Fundamental Laws!), engaged the material in interesting ways, and I was impressed with the increased sophistication of many of your posts. Several interesting posts are in the Comrades’ Corner this week, and we will talk more about them in class. So please have look at those posts and the comment threads attached to them if you haven’t already.

Finally, I failed to get a poll set up for the students’ choice award.  Next week for sure! For this round, we decided to feature Charles’ post on the Russo-Japanese war, which received lots of good attention in the comments and featured a beautiful image.