Revolutionology

An introduction

Robert Bird

pp. 83-84

in: Studies in East European Thought 70, 2018.

Abstract

The essays gathered for this double issue of Studies in East European Thought originated as contributions to a conference The Bolshevik Contagion held at the Neubauer Collegium of the University of Chicago on 2–3 November 2017. The purpose of the conference was severalfold. First, it was intended to commemorate the 1917 revolutions in Russia (and subsequent upheaval elsewhere in Europe) by re-examining some of their central theoretical texts. Second, the conference sought to investigate new paradigms for intellectual history (or the history of ideas) as a discipline uniting history, philosophy, political theory and critical theory. As the inaugural event of the long-term project Revolutionology: Media and Networks of Intellectual Revolution, the conference asked to what extent a major historical event can be correlated with intellectual sources and, concomitantly, how a close examination of these sources as events and as material artefacts can help us to understand the ideas as historical forces.