Russia from before and after the Revolution in pictures

Sergey Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorski was a Russian aristocract who was chosen by Tsar Nicholas II to record the Russian Empire in photographs. Armed with a train and a letter of introduction from the Emperor of All the Russians, every door opened to Gorski on his mission to record the Russian Empire, which was soon to be no more. He took 10,000 pictures, many of which serve as a haunting memorial of a way of life that was soon to disappear with the October Revolution.

Brian Davies, former curator of the Pontypridd Museum, gives a fascinating account of the life of Gorski and shows some of Gorski's most beautiful and interesting photographs. This talk also shows other images of the Russian Empire before the Revolution, and of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.

This session, on the centenary of the Russian Revolution, sets the context for the later panel discussion on the Revolution. What were its achievements, betrayals, tragedies, victories? And what is its legacy?