Since revolutions are complex social and political upheavals, historians who write about them are bound to differ on the most basic questions – causes, revolutionary aims, impact on the society, political outcome, and even the timespan of the revolution itself. In the case of the Russian Revolution, the starting-point presents no problem: almost everyone takes it to be the “February Revolution” of 1917, which led to the abdication of Nicholas II and the formation of the Provisional Government. But when did the Russian Revolution end? Was it all over by October 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power? Or did the end of the Revolution come with the Bolsheviks’ victory in the Civil War in 1920? Was Stalin’s “revolution from above” part of the Russian Revolution? Or should we take the view that the Revolution continued throughout the lifetime of the Soviet state? (read full text…)