Senior Division Website

PROCESS PAPER
A Single Spark: Bloody Sunday and the First Revolution

Sara Luu Alejandra Katz Haley Petersen

When choosing an NHD topic, we wanted to select something that was intriguing to the whole group. In middle school, all three of us learned the basics about the Russian Revolution upon reading Animal Farm and studying World War II and the Cold War. Alexei's hemophilia and the rumors of Anastasia's survival also came up during studies of genetics in class, adding to our interest. In addition to this, one of our members has a family with strong Russian heritage. This, along with current events of the time (many Russians were protesting against Putin's rule and accusations of corrupt government were at a high), influenced our decision to focus on Russia. We wanted to dig deeper into the history and discover the lesser-known aspects; Bloody Sunday and the First Revolution fit this perfectly. We began by finding background information and places to research. A helpful institution was the University of Arizona, which had many rare primary resources. Here, we found useful information pertaining to the key figures and their ideologies, such as the different sects of Marxism and liberalism. After gathering some background, we focused on the events surrounding Bloody Sunday itself and its impact, most usefully in autobiographies from the time. In addition to the U of A library, our group had a collection books from our Russian member which proved helpful. Our final resource was the internet, which helped us clear up confusions and find documents from the Library of Congress. To choose a category in this competition, we considered the possibilities that suited our expertise. One of our group members was familiar with computers and basic coding, which drew us to the website category. The website allowed to us to have a format we could customize to aesthetically fit the theme and convey the atmosphere of the time. It combined text with multimedia and interactive elements, a feature unique to this entry format that took both textual thinking and artistic interest into

account. The site construction took some light research into coding for features like the timeline. All of our members added notes to their respective sections of the website and together we edited and finalized the material, writing analyses together and enforcing our message with neat presentation and interactive components. Bloody Sunday and the First Revolution fits the theme of "Revolution, Reaction, Reform" because though some of its effects were lost in the long run, it was the first all-encompassing revolt against the tsar. Not only was it a revolution (and a contributor to the Revolution of 1917), but also a cause for reform. The creation of the Duma was an attempt to reform tsardom and steer it toward democracy. These changes and reactions to the revolt, from the October Manifesto to the changing public opinion, show the First Revolution's true impact. Thus, though this event lost its title as "the" Russian Revolution after 1917, it still had significance in the scheme of history.