Linee di frattura nell'Impero zarista. Uno sguardo d'insieme

This essay offers an interpretation of the crisis of the Tsarist regime. It analyses three lines of fracture that accompanied the growth and yet undermined the Imperial state during the 19th Century. It examines the tensions between a pre-modern social hierarchy and modern state-building, between an imperial or national definition of the state, and between the promotion of knowledge and the autocratic ideology. The 1905-1917 reform-revolution historical cycle is interpreted as the result of the intersection and reciprocal intensification of these long-term factors.