The Revolution of 1917 - the Beginning of the Russian Industrial Project

The paper dwells on the Russian Revolution of 1917 as part of a global modernisation process. Russia has gone through the same stages of an industrial society formation as other developed countries of the world. The specificity of its transition from the agrarian to the industrial stage of development is the seizure of political power at the stage of industrial revolution not by the bourgeoisie, as in other countries of the world, but by the working class led by the Bolshevik political party - RSDLP(b). Its leader V.I. Lenin proposed suggested that the universal Anglo-Saxon model of industrialism and private capital should be substituted for a state-capitalist model based on state and cooperative property and state regulation of the economy (NEP). This project was not implemented in the USSR due to the pressure of internal and external factors and was substituted by a mobilisation administrative-command management model, which corresponded to the totalitarian political regime. A.N. Kosygin (the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR) attempted to launch a transition to market management methods in the 1960s, but this attempt was curtailed by party dogmatists. M.S. Gorbachev continued the reforms in the 1980s (Perestroika), but due to lack of competence his belated measures led to the loss of power by the Communists and liberal reforms that were also incompetent and dishonest. With V.V. Putin's presidency, Russia has partly returned to the state regulation of the economy.

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