As long as the Soviet Union existed, Soviet historians depicted the history of their country as an unbroken unit. Paradoxically, the most determined opponents of that failed regime agreed on that point. Although of course they had different attitudes toward the revolution and the Soviet regime, both groups saw the outlines of Soviet history already inherent in Lenin's revolution. Liberal Western historians, and some Marxist dissidents in the Soviet Union, disagreed: they saw profound discontinuities and maintained that the direction of history was not predetermined at its critical turning points. By stressing the contingent nature of Soviet history, they were able to identify themselves with the emancipatory goals of the socialist revolution without accepting Stalinism or the undeniably unattractive aspects of the era of Brezhnev as a natural outcome of the revolution.

In this important though often only implicit debate, the interpretation of the 1920s had a crucial place. This period stands out in Soviet history. Many saw it as a golden age: the victorious revolutionaries had destroyed the old order and eliminated, or at least narrowed, the appalling cleavage between the poor and the rich that had characterized imperial Russia. The new regime gave opportunities to the talented and ambitious to rise in the social hierarchy and filled millions with hope. At the same time, the Bolshevik government still allowed a considerable degree of cultural pluralism.