The Russian Revolution and its Modernization Significance

Abstract

The article is devoted to understanding of the modernization significance of the Russian revolution of 1905-1917 years. It investigates the basic preconditions of the Russian revolution (socio-economic, socio-mental and geo-economic). It shows that the main socio-economic premise is the nature of the reform of 1861, unfair to the peasantry, which led later to the shortage of arable land and quite a heavy material situation of the peasant class. The difficult situation of the peasantry was compounded by the contradictory nature of the Russian capitalism of the turn of 19^th-20^th centuries, when capitalist modernization was actually carried out by the tsarist government by means of the money collected as tax revenue from those same farmers. The author considers the main stages (or phases) of the Russian revolution: the revolution of 1905, February and October 1917. He shows that actual Soviet society emerged at the stage of the February revolution of 1917. He describes the key historical conflicts in the transition from February to October. Special attention is paid to events of the October revolution of 1917. The author notes that despite its non-democratic impulse, the revolution nevertheless had a distinctly progressive character, because in his own way decided the urgent social issue. The latter, in turn, included the issues of peasant, worker and national.