Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables and Maps
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Causes of Social Revolutions in France, Russia, amd China
- Part II Outcomes of Social Revolutions in France, Rusia, and China
- 4 What Changed and How: A Focus on State Building
- 5 The Birth of a “Modern State Edifice” in France
- 6 The Emergence of a Dictatorial Party-State in Russia
- 7 The Rise of a Mass-Mobiliang Party-State in China
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Emergence of a Dictatorial Party-State in Russia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables and Maps
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Causes of Social Revolutions in France, Russia, amd China
- Part II Outcomes of Social Revolutions in France, Rusia, and China
- 4 What Changed and How: A Focus on State Building
- 5 The Birth of a “Modern State Edifice” in France
- 6 The Emergence of a Dictatorial Party-State in Russia
- 7 The Rise of a Mass-Mobiliang Party-State in China
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The great achievement of the Bolsheviks was not in making the revolution, but in slowing it down and diverting it into Communist channels … The astonishing feat of the Bolsheviks was their success in checking the elemental drive of the Russian masses towards a chaotic utopia.
Paul AvrichNo modern social revolution has been as thorough-going as the Russian. In a matter of months during 1917—18 massive revolts by industrial workers, peasants, and soldiers undercut the landed and capitalist classes and sealed the dissolution of the state machineries of the tsarist regime. The organized revolutionaries who claimed leadership within the revolutionary crisis were, moreover, dedicated to socialist ideals of equality and proletarian democracy. Yet the Russian Revolution soon gave rise to a highly centralized and bureaucratic party-state, which eventually became committed to propelling rapid national industrialization by command and terror. To understand why and how these outcomes developed, we shall analyze the possibilities, imperatives, and impossibilities created for conflicting forces by the Russian revolutionary situation after March, 1917. As in the French Revolution, two basic processes arising out of the revolutionary situation intersected to shape the outcomes of the Revolution. These were popular (especially peasant) revolts and the struggles of urban-based political leaderships to build new state organizations. But the Russian revolutionary crisis deepened much more rapidly and chaotically than the French.
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- Information
- States and Social RevolutionsA Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China, pp. 206 - 235Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979
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