There will not be another Russian revolution
Revolutions upset old institutions and tear societies apart. They do so in the name of the noblest goal: the ultimate happiness of humankind. They are led by dreamers, motivated by compassion and a desire for a better world. They never start out as power hungry monsters, but that is often how they end up. In that sense, we could argue that most revolutions fail.
June 23, 2026 -
James C. Pearce
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Hot TopicsIssue 4 2026Magazine
Revolutions are a lot like geometry. Euclidean geometry tells us that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. In this sense, revolutions are the shortest route to political and social change. The Russian mathematician and geometer, Nikolai Lobachevsky, changed our understanding of this relationship. Time and space are far larger than we initially thought – and history extremely multidimensional. Yes, revolutions quickly force change, but the path there is never perfectly linear. The line zigs and zags. The Russian revolutions of 1917 were both remarkably spontaneous and the product of deep historical forces. Poor working conditions and bread riots in Petrograd sparked the February Revolution, but years of strain from the First World War, autocratic rule, state repression, and an outdated socio-economic class system had already pushed Russian society to its breaking point.
Russia’s exiled liberal opposition, whose entire personality is hating Vladimir Putin, feel giddy that Venezuela, Iran and Cuba are a sign of things to come. Putin, they hope, is losing allies, becoming isolated and desperate. The economy, they argue, is crumbling alongside the frontline. They believe society is desperately waiting, licking its lips, for the regime to be over. When that day comes, they reckon that the population, tired and weary, will whisk them to power, bringing Russia in from the darkness to create “a beautiful future”. Yet an actual uprising in Russia is extremely unlikely. Three things show us why Russia is far from such an eventuality. First, we should explore the five conditions that are often needed for a revolution. The second is a theory devised by Russia’s most famous sociologist, Natalia Zubarevich, known as the “Four Russias”. This shows us where ordinary Russians actually are. The third has to do with the nature of revolutions themselves.
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