| Summary/Abstract |
The Russian Revolution of 1917 has to be assessed in a broad historical context. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, European countries were completing their transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. Until then, their economic activities had been based on capitalist market relations. Practically everywhere the transition sparked sociopolitical revolutions. As a rule, they occurred in major European cities and industrial centers under the slogan of modernization. This notion entailed renovating social life on the basis of rule of law principles, individual freedom, and political equality. Objectively speaking, public discourse on "modernization," "modernity," and "new times" was overloaded with positive assessments. The progress of social development was associated entirely with the self-identity of free individuals. Liberation was triggered by a growing diversification in spheres of activity for every individual who was free to choose his own way of life regardless of religious beliefs, social group conventions, or family traditions. The future was proclaimed as a priority and the past as something to obliterate, which was not always justified.
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