Revolutions do not happen unexpectedly, empires do not die out of the blue. The main lesson that we can learn from the 1917 revolution is an understanding of why the emperor and his entourage, in an environment that required cardinal internal reforms, not only did not dare to undertake these reforms, but, on the contrary, tried with all their might to turn the country’s development backwards, strengthening reliance on «traditional values», Orthodoxy and the army. Chapter by chapter, through the living stories of people, in the book «The Empire Must Die» Mikhail Zygar shows how the empire is steadily moving towards disaster and why nothing can save it. The protagonist of this book is Russian civil society. It emerges in the early years of the twentieth century, develops before the eyes of the reader, and disappears before his very eyes shortly after 1917. Recognizing the chronicle of events a century ago, the reader can understand what is happening today and try to look into the future.
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