Social and Economic Background of the October Revolution of 1917: the Lessons of History

Abstract

The article discusses the socio-economic background of the October revolution of 1917. This topic has been studied many times, but it still has a lot of "blind-spots". One of the obvious problems is the ideological nature of the topic. The Russian Empire was not as economically and politically backward as it was presented in the Soviet historiography. However, the reforms of 1861 can be called half-hearted reforms because they created a number of institutional barriers to the development of the state and society.