ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in this book. The book is an informed study of the Russian past and presents that lets us glean this country's, and indirectly our own, possible future. The Bolsheviks endeavored to transform tsarist Russia, with all its cultural traditions, into a Soviet system producing and produced by a "New Man". The tremendous moral and cultural change promised by the Bolsheviks has failed to materialize. In many respects, Russia under the Bolsheviks experienced modernization, and thus "Westernization", but it has never attained full modernity or savored all its fruits. The Russian intelligentsia appears to be unique, set off from what elsewhere are mere intellectuals, as, say, in France. Both groups, Russian and French, have had enormous moral power in their societies. Many observers have commented on the fact that the breakdown of communist systems in Russia and Eastern Europe failed to rekindle any idealistic dreams.
