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A US flag flies off the stern of a tour boat at the Port of Los Angele in California on July 31, 2025. (Getty Images)
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President Wilson in Congress recommending the U.S. enter the war against Germany in 1917 (Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
One hundred years ago, two events ushered in the modern era. The first was America’s entry into the First World War in April 1917, which launched the United States onto the stage as a global superpower. The other was the Bolshevik Revolution, which created the Soviet Union and led a century of communist revolutions and totalitarian repression, of which China and North Korea remain the key legatees.
In his new book, 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Arthur Herman explores the genesis and significance of those two events and the lives of the two men who set them in motion, Vladimir Lenin and Woodrow Wilson.
On January 22 Hudson held an evening discussion on how Lenin and Wilson’s competing visions for creating a more perfect world order spawned a century of global disorder and set the stage for the geopolitical dilemmas facing us today.
To view Dr. Herman's slides, click here.
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