In the course of the twentieth century the Russians time and again found themselves in situations for which there was no precedent. After the astounding Bolshevik victory in 1917, the revolutionary leaders were as surprised by their success as everyone else. Their ideology had not prepared them for the problems they had to face, and the building of the Soviet state turned out to be a vast improvisation. In 1992, on the ruins of communism, the Russians were attempting to build a political system suitable for a European state at the very end of the twentieth century and to create a market economy. To be sure, there were other countries in Eastern Europe that also had to struggle with the heritage of communism, but none had problems as serious as the Russians. The size of the country, the heterogeneity of the population, and the relative lack of democratic traditions and civil society exacerbated the problems facing Russia.

The situation in which the country found itself was oddly similar to that in 1917. Once again the stasis of a conservative old regime was challenged by a period of liberalization, leading to descent into anarchy. The period of anarchy was brought to a conclusion not by a genuine revolution of determined rebels supported by a majority of the people, but by the disintegration of the old regime. In 1917, the country had also experienced vast and traumatic social, political, and economic transformations.