Reading History: The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution occupies the strategic centre of contemporary history. In a matter of eight months power passed from the hands of the Tsar into those of the Bolsheviks. Europe's slumbering giant, for centuries a bastion of reaction, suddenly became the source of a momentous challenge to the world domination of western capitalism. The Soviet Union presented a. dynamic new model of economic, social, political and ideological development which was to exert a potent influence over the world's less advanced nations and less privileged classes. The revolution set in motion a process of change in which we are all caught up.