ABSTRACT
Many view the Russian Revolution as a socio-economic upheaval. Following 1917, so the argument goes, Russia transformed itself from a backward, agricultural country into a modern, industrial one. Certainly, profound changes did take place, and Stalin’s Soviet Union looked very different from the tsarist state. It would seem, however, that this emphasis on the Revolution as rupturing the material fabric of the past misses what is perhaps its m ost interesting aspect-the bold effort undertaken by the Bolshevik regime to change not only the social environment but the human soul itself, to revolutionize the very consciousness of man-man’s most basic attitudes about himself and others.
