ABSTRACT
The thesis that the structure of Russian society in the nineteenth century ruled out the possibility of development along the lines of Western democracy has been most effectively challenged by N. S. Timasheff, a non-Marxist sociologist. Professor Timasheff's views represent a continuation and elaboration of the arguments presented by a number of Russian historians, who asserted in their pre-revolutionary writings that Russia was following the path of social development taken by the democratic countries of Western Europe. In the West the impetus behind parliamentary democracy had come primarily, though not exclusively, from the urban middle classes: traders, manufacturers, professional men, and intellectuals. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the relationship between the urban bourgeoisie and the Tsarist government took a form that prevented these manufacturers and the merchants from becoming a strong and effective opponent of the autocracy.
