The most common approach to systematizing historiography to date has been proposed by Jack Goldstone, an American political scientist. This classification, of course, is not the only one and did not appear from scratch, combining and reworking existing among researchers, however, it is the most influential. This systematization is based on the so-called generations of researchers of the theory of revolution and has gained popularity and developed independently by many authors. The division of these generations occurs not only on a temporal basis, but also based on certain methodological principles that are attributed to the authors. In connection with this division, some representatives of the generation of the 60s fell into the group of the 20—30s, and P. Sorokin was attributed to the second generation. Thus, the first generation is associated with a historical approach and philosophical-historical interpretation. The second is with modernization theory and structural-functional analysis. The third generation, according to the developers of this approach, distinguishes state-centric models.
The first generation, from the point of view of adherents of this concept, refers to the 1920—30s. – “The generation of the natural history of the revolution” (after the title of Edwards’s work “The Natural History of Revolution”), to which belonged Edwards, Brinton, and Petty. To the second generation, Jack Goldstone ranked Ted Garr, Chalmers Johnson, Samuel Huntington, Charles Tilly (“From Mobilization to Revolution” (1978). To the third generation – Harry Eckstein “The Etiology of Internal Wars” (1965), Anthony Oberschall “Growing Expectations and Political Disorder” (1969), Edward Muller “Applicability of the Theory of Opportunity to the Analysis of Political Violence” (1972), Barbara Salert “Revolutions and revolutionaries” (1976), Theda Skocpol. J. Goldstone called last work “the crown of the third generation” [Goldstone, 59].
In the 90s Jack Goldstone said that “the third generation of theories of revolution is leaving the scene”: “not a single generally accepted theory of the fourth generation has yet been created, but the contours of such a theory are clear” [Goldstone, 99]. As targets for this fourth generation, Goldstone proposed revising all Skocpol’s key assumptions. “The stability of the regime in it will be considered as an unobvious state and substantial attention will be paid to the conditions for the existence of regimes for a long time; issues of identity and ideology, connections and leadership will occupy an important place; revolutionary processes and consequences will be seen as the result of the interaction of numerous forces. More importantly, it is possible that the fourth generation theories will combine the results of case studies, rational choice models and quantitative data analysis, and a generalization of these theories will cover situations and events that were not even mentioned in theories of the revolution of past generations” [Goldstone, 103].
It should be noted that any systematization should be based on homogeneous principles – criteria of one level. At the basis of the classification under consideration, all criteria (definitives) are in different planes. How can one compare the “historical approach” of a researcher with the idea of the modernization functions of the revolution or the basic principle of the model? You can only compare comparable categories. For example, those who invest in modernization functions and regressive functions, who place the principle of the role of state structures or demos organization at the forefront of revolution, those with a historical or mathematical approach (or any other), those who use structural-functional analysis and those who, for example, are repelled by form, quantity and strength, etc.
In many ways, the essence of the approaches of the entire XX and beginning of the XXI centuries. It boils down to the development of a theory of the revolution of Marxism or to the desire to oppose something to this theory. On the first side, revolutions are considered only in connection with a change in formations, on the second side, any massive radical forms of protest and coup d’etat fall into the revolution. It should be recognized that the Marxist approach is still more systematic and holistic, which constantly attracts adherents, and many of its provisions, one way or another, have been borrowed to this day. “The Marxist theory of society, often refined to the theory of revolution, remains one of the most stimulating models for the analysis of revolutionary processes of transformation” – a conclusion that many researchers have come to. The Marxist approach is more systemic, but sins with schematism. The three biggest shortcomings are the understanding of the revolution as a mandatory transition between formations, the inevitability of the proletarian revolution, which should lead to the emergence of the last formation (higher), economic determinism. The disadvantages of all opponents are more numerous. The lack of a clear definition of revolution (which allows “ripping” any riot, any significant social protest, ordinary coup d’etat into the term “revolution”), the causes of the emergence, the confusion of the causes of the revolution and what became the “trigger” – the reason for the first mass demonstrations.
A lot of research and criticism led to the fact that, regardless of the vulnerability of many of the formulations and provisions that came in the XX century, and were developed in its first third, in the subsequent XX century introduced little new. Most attempts to create something new lead to the same situation. The situation that has developed since the 80s. XX century can be classified as a methodological crisis: existing methodologies and research methods do not satisfy, new ones do not appear. The shortage of new developments leads to the fact that analytical models of researchers, the same definitions, and schemes with small modifications wander from research to research.
If we summarize the current state of the theory of revolution, today there is no single definition of revolution that is satisfactory and accepted by the majority. Not a single concept gives an answer to why revolutions are characteristic only of the era of capitalism and are unknown until the first bourgeois revolutions. There is no agreement on the causes or consequences of revolutions. The problem of typology (classification) of revolutions is one of the most difficult to develop a theory of revolution, where two extremes dominate: the simple division of revolutions into “western” and “eastern” or the promotion of a whole set of types, types and subspecies that suffer from a methodological point of view and in no way do not bring final clarity to the subject under study, in addition, a characteristic feature is the attempt to modernize various established theories and approaches and their resuscitation. The new generation of researchers in the theory of revolution will have to answer all the same questions and to break the movement in the circle of the same ideas and concepts, to look for fundamentally different approaches.
1.2 Marxist paradigm.
1.2.1 Lenin.
Studying this area of our analysis, we rely overall on a Marxist theoretical background, also involving other concepts for analysis. Marxism in this context acts as a conceptual basis, therefore we pay special attention to the theses of Lenin, as the author who was most involved in the process of the formation of a revolutionary subject.
Marxism gave the revolution the role of the locomotive of history, the substantial meaning in history, and deprived the idea of the sacred halo’s social processes. The Marxist understanding of the revolution has become the most important paradigm for any way of studying them, therefore it seems important to consider the theory of revolution of V. Lenin as the most classical, orthodox and free from prejudice, and the theory of A. Gramsci as a vivid revisionist theory.
In his works, V. I. Lenin proved that the development and aggravation of the contradictions of imperialism – internal (economic crises, unemployment, intensification