None of us were alive by 1917. If we go by seek the roots of any conflict by History we come to find shit enough to justify pretty much anything, it just depends on how deep we dig. No country is a saint, not even Tibet!
We have to sort our lives today, not at our grandparents graves.
I strongly disagree with you on this subject. History is a kind of collective memory, a part of a hive mind of a society, even though the individual actors are long dead. Those who forget history are cursed to repeat it.
Not understanding the history will also lead to wrong measure being taken now. Case in point, Novorossia, where the root of the current conflict is in 1917, when a part the Russian society was forcefully moved into a Galicia-influenced one. Those who understand the history, will see that the solution to the conflict was all along federalisation of Ukraine (which was asked for by the population of the region and brokered by Russia), something that was blatantly rejected by the Keivan coup government. So the bomb that was smouldering since 1917 was continuing to wait for a trigger to set it off. Such trigger became the Odessa massacre of the 2nd of May, when the Russian population of Novorossia saw what was also in store for them and had to defend themselves...
As an aside, the roots to Russian distrust to Poland, for example are in the 1600, from the time of Polish intervention, trying to install a false-Drimtrij as Russian Czar.
Now, I agree with you on the point of numbers and numerology. Numbers mean only what we make them mean. the same (in)famous 2777...
101011011001 or 0010 0111 0111 0111 or 5331 are also 2777, 2 7 7 7, and 2777 in binary, binary and octal respectively. It all depends on what patterns our human pattern-seeking mind will manage to see in the static noise.
History is there to teach, I don't disagree we need to look into it to avoid to commit past mistakes again.
But it's NOT there to justify any murder on 2014 based on what went on in 16th Century. Historical Vendetta is a huge mistake and we are Europeans not Gaza strip!
And about this Ukrainian x Russian thing, by looking deeply into History we get the Slavs Gran-Duchy of Moscow against the Slavs of the Kingdom of Kiev; in other words, whatever those guys are doing there is called fratricide, taken Russians and Ukrainians are based upon the very same people.