The Mattapoisett Historical Society, in partnership with the Mattapoisett Library, will host a lecture series, “Russia: The History of Russia Under the Tsars and Transition and Reality Check in Post-Soviet Russia.”

Lectures will be held in the meeting room of the Library on Saturday afternoons from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. beginning January 12 and ending February 9.

Seth Mendell, President of the Historical Society and former teacher of Russian history at Avon Old Farms School, will trace the development of Russia from the grand princes of Kiev in the ninth century to the fall of the Romanovs in 1917:

•Lecture I-Kiev, Moscow and the House of Ivan

•Lecture II-Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great

•Lecture III-Empress Elizabeth and Katherine the Great

•Lecture IV-Alexander I, Napoleon, Nicholas I

•Lecture V-Alexander II, Nicholas II and Revolution 1917

The series will conclude with a sixth lecture by Rachel Deery entitled “Transition to Reality Check: American witness to change and adjustment in Post-Soviet Russia.”  Deery, who sits on the Board of the Mattapoisett Library, will speak about her experiences as an expatriate and journalist in Moscow during the early 1990s, and her return to Russia in 1998 after the economic collapse of the newly capitalist country.

Guests are asked to sign up before each lecture. For more information, contact Susan Pizzolato at 508-758-4171 or spizzolo@sailsinc.org.