ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the place of the Russian Revolution in world history; terror and its historiography; and the Bolsheviks’ concept of law and legal revolution, an indispensable part of the broader revolution. It looks at the revolution through the prism of a very small group of people, the Karaims and discusses the revolution’s impact on the Belarusian nation-forming process. The book describes the Russian Revolution’s impact on how Western countries addressed one of the key problems of 19th-century Europe, namely the Polish striving to restore their statehood, lost towards the end of the 18th century. The largest conference of its kind in Central Europe, was organised by the Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding, a Polish public institution established in 2011 by an act of the parliament with the aim of helping Poles and Russians to get to know each other better.
