The Russian Revolution in 1917 was accomplished through the violent overthrow of the existing government, followed by the complete restructuring of Soviet society. The recent revolution in the Soviet Union was largely bloodless up until the aborted hard-liner response, an attempt to retake the government from the liberal forces then in power. The result of this aborted take-over was quite the opposite of what was intended. Instead of returning conservatives to power, the attempt assured power to even more liberal forces. Once again, Russian society is being restructured, along with the dissolution of the union of the various Russian republics. The seeds of this new revolution can be found in the society of the Soviet Union over its history, a society that was tightly controlled by a growing and complex bureaucracy which intruded into every facet of life. The new revolution has attacked this bureaucratic structure, showing an awareness that much of the stagnation in Soviet society derived from this central core and from the way in which it moved outward to include practically everything in Soviet society. The revolution is a major shift in thinking about the bureaucracy and about the value of centralized control.
Pipes (1992) notes that the problem of bureaucratization in Soviet society extends back long before the development of the communist state. He finds that since the 14th century Russian society has been distinguished less by absolutism such as was common to much of early Europe and more by a distinctive type of unlimited authority that combined sovereignty with ownership. This patrimonial regime used the state to mold society and to give it its sense of identity: "A country ruled in this manner held together only as long as government was firm and decisive; the instant it weakened, society fell apart" (p. 28). Pipes finds that this is what happened in the 16th century in what is known as the time of Troubles, in 1...