ABSTRACT
In France, Theda Skocpol writes, the state was encumbered by "institutionalized and politically guaranteed local, provincial, occupational, and estate rights and corporate bodies". That is people were allowed to buy their offices and run them for their own profits according to a complicated and irrational system of rules that meant most people lost out. The revolution ended up strengthening the state apparatus, ridding it of "medieval rubbish" that led to inefficiencies in rule, production, administration, and so forth. The Bolshevik revolutionaries—members of an action group key in instigating the revolution—needed to consolidate power rapidly throughout a predominantly agricultural society with few cities to give rise to organized revolutionary groups. Although ideologies provided key justifications for the revolutionaries, Skocpol gives them only a limited role: revolutions are not moments of "unlimited openness" where the beliefs of the bold are implemented perfectly. Instead, structural conditions cause "practical detours on the road to power", meaning ideologies are almost always implemented imperfectly.
