In this magisterial, path-breaking book, which for the first time seeks to explain the origins and the course of the latest Russian Revolution by placing it in the context of the great revolutions past, Irina Starodubrovskaya and Vladimir Mau have produced an intellectual equivalent of a deliciously dense and rich multilayered chocolate cake: like its physical counterpart, it is both impossible to consume in one sitting and hard to stop eating.

Resident Scholar Leon Aron

There are four conceptual layers, each containing the authors’ answers to one of the four fundamental questions they pose: What are the commonalities in how revolutions come about, unfold, and end? What are the deficiencies of scholarly approaches to the study of revolutions, and how can they be synthesized and amended? How can these amended causal schemes help explain what happened in Russia between 1985 and 2004 and what will happen after? And finally, how will the experience of the Russian Revolution contribute to the existing body of theorizing on revolutions?

For those who have grappled with these issues as part of education or in their own work, an overview of the literature undertaken to answer the first question is an excellent refresher.

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Leon Aron is a resident scholar at AEI.