ABSTRACT
A longstanding discourse within Russian social thought has contended that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia was a country in “systemic crisis.” Some Marxist historians have even applied the term “crisis” to the eighteenth century. For most writers, the phrase conveys the idea of a complete breakdown of the social system in every respect – political, economic, and social. When a system reaches such a crisis, it can no longer meet basic needs. The system has, in effect, lost the capacity to sustain itself, much less raise the living standards of its subjects or citizens. It has, in a word, exhausted all of its resources for growth. As V.S. Diakin, an ardent proponent of this view, noted with respect to late Imperial Russia: “The autocratic regime [by 1917] had become so rotten that not only was it incapable of implementing a plan that could save itself, it was not even able to devise a plan in the first place.” 1
