Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer opens with the theory that few nations have been so convulsed by revolutionary change as early twentieth century Russia. The writer then notes that Crane Brinton theorizes that revolutions generally do not produce the kind of complete alteration in national structure and outlook that might have appeared to have been the outcome while the revolution was in its active phase. The writer maintains that revolutions, especially violent revolutions, tend to be highly ideological in outlook. The writer argues that Russia changed as a result of the great Revolution of 1917, but in a startling number of ways it remained true to its history and traditions. The writer concludes that Crane Brinton's theory on revolution applies to Russia as it applies to so many other places and times, showing as it does, the difficulties, and near-impossibilities of completely transforming a nation in a short period of time.

From the Paper:

"Continuity in the underlying theories of political power meant also a continuation of previous ideas in regard to ideas about the proper organization of society. On the surface, pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary society could not have appeared more different. Tsarist society was nearly medieval in its organizational scheme. All Russians were carefully grouped according to hierarchical classes that were largely hereditary in origin. Some movement between classes was possible, but on the whole, the vast majority of Russians remained peasants with little hope of ever leaving the land. Though serfdom had been ended decades before, the peasant, even in 1917, was unlikely to be the possessor of much in the way of private property. In late Imperial Russia, the mir had seen to it that peasant villages functioned as collectives. Collectivization was one of the mainstays of Stalin's policies. The collective farm, or kolkhoz, was, in so many ways, the mir by another name."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dowlah, Alex F., and John E. Elliot. The Life and Times of Soviet Socialism. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1997.
• Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Wood, Alan. The Origins of the Russian Revolution, 1861-1917. New York: Routledge, 2003.

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