Boris Mironov’s New Interpretation of the Russian Revolution

Abstract

In 2019 Boris Mironov published a book in St Petersburg that aimed to replace the plethora of interpretations of the Russian Revolution, and the Communist interpretation of the history of Imperial Russia, with alternative interpretations based on the modernization theory derived from Max Weber and developed by Talcott Parsons. They were combined with extensive statistical data to provide an all-embracing understanding of Russian developments from the 1860s to the present day. This article offers an evaluation of these new interpretations. integrating developments social use of newly uncovered data sources (e.g. anthropometric keenness to replace Marxism-Leninism by a quite different understanding of Russian history; optimistic evaluation of socio-econ-omic and political developments under late Tsarism. highly in Russia