Russia at the opening of the twentieth century was a rapidly changing society. In addition to industrialization, urbanization, and the growth of new social classes, the era saw a rapid expansion of education and literacy, new directions in art and literature, the appearance of social, economic, and professional clubs and associations, the emergence of a feminist movement, nationalist stirrings among some of the non-Russian half of the population, a broader contact with the Western world, and many other changes. The percentage of nonhereditary nobles and commoners increased at all levels of both the army officer corps and the government bureaucracy except the very highest. Children of the clergy, the merchant class, and the new professional classes increasingly held these government and military positions, which formerly had been the preserve of the nobility. At the same time there was a dramatic population growth, from about 73 million in 1855 to around 168 million in 1913, the result of improved medical care, food, and other factors that produced a longer life expectancy, especially fewer deaths in infancy and childbirth. During the same period urban population grew from 10 to 18 percent of the population, and the largest cities grew extremely fast, tripling or quadrupling their size. Political and social-economic discontent was also growing, producing a potentially revolutionary situation that erupted first in 1905 and then, more profoundly and successfully, in 1917.

The February Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the Russian monarchy also initiated a far-reaching social upheaval. In the new political freedom all classes of society were able to assert themselves as never before and to organize to fulfill their varied aspirations. Thousands of public organizations, reflecting class, occupation, gender, ethnicity, residence, beliefs, and other human characteristics, emerged and competed in the marketplace of ideas and in the political arena. Swiftly, those representing the interests of industrial workers (and urban lower classes generally) and peasants asserted their dominance, displacing the old middle and upper classes in control of effective power. The October Revolution was, in an important sense, only a confirmation of this successful social inversion, with the Bolshevik Party providing its political articulation and leadership.

After the Bolsheviks took over in the October Revolution, the civil war of 1918-1921 extended the social upheaval even further. The peasants by mid-1918 successfully expropriated noble and other non-peasant lands in the countryside. The nobility as a class disappeared in the maelstrom of 1918-1921, a remarkable social transformation, far exceeding what had happened in the French and English revolutions. The rest of the educated and propertied classes were not so extensively destroyed as identifiable social elements, but they lost their status in society and much of their property (such as houses or apartments). Even the civil war's ''victors'' were profoundly affected. In 1921, with the devastated industrial economy at only about 13 percent of prewar levels, factories were largely closed, major cities half emptied, and industrial workers scattered. The peasants achieved their main aspiration, possession of all the land, but the famine of 1921-1923 claimed about five million of them and left millions more permanently impaired in health; even their control of the land proved short-lived. Overall, nine years (1914-1923) of war, revolution, civil war, and famine had killed about 25-30 million people and uprooted millions more, who roamed the countryside or squatted in towns and villages. An estimated seven million children were homeless. Two to three million people, mostly of the best educated classes, fled the country permanently. The social upheaval, and its impact, beggars the imagination. . . .

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