When the Soviet regime came to power in 1917, its revolutionary nature was soon recognised, both inside the country and out. This was reflected most clearly in the fundamental transformation the regime sought in all of the major sectors of public life – political, social, economic and cultural. In all of these sectors, traditional structures, patterns and processes were thoroughly reworked, and although some continuities remained from the tsarist through to the Soviet period, the magnitude of the changes that flowed from 1917 clearly marked the regime off as revolutionary in nature. Indeed, this was its avowed purpose: the revolutionary transformation of tsarist society. Of the four sectors that were transformed, the most important for the current study was the cultural.

Any truly revolutionary change will involve the substantial reworking of the cultural sphere. This sort of cultural revolution is what marked the three great revolutions of modern times, the French of 1789, the Russian of 1917, and the Chinese of 1949. A cultural revolution represents the reworking of the whole public sphere of life. The norms whereby public life is structured and the values which underpin these new patterns of action are transformed as those which formerly had dominated in the public sphere are replaced by new principles representing the brave new world that the revolution represents. The new structures of power that these norms represent become embedded in the patterns of action and the webs of relationships that develop in the society, and they are reinforced by the daily interactions which are structured by these norms and which give concrete realisation to their essence.