To a question of “critical points” of the revolutionary process of 1917

Abstract

The article is devoted to an analysis of the key moments of development of the revolutionary process in Russia in 1917 the final result of which was the armed seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party. The purposeful implementation of this strategy in the context of a world war and the revolutionary situation that arose in February 1917 virtually excluded the possibility of a peaceful resolution of the political conflict and made civil war in Russia inevitable. The collapse of the Russian monarchy was the result of an interweaving host of objective and purely subjective circumstances, among which radical Bolshevik politics played a decisive role. It was the situation of the civil war that largely predetermined the nature of Russia’s modernization in the twentieth century. Her dramatic experience clearly shows that it is much easier to decree democratic institutions than to develop the political conditions and practices necessary to create a stable system of democratic governance.