Beginning with the radical movements of the mid-19th century, the encyclopaedia covers the development of the revolutionary movement created by the intelligentsia; the condition of the peasants, that of the working class, and of the army; the role of the Tsarist secret police; the agents provocateurs; and the revolutionaries' own underground. A substantial section is devoted to the emergence of liberation movements among the national minorities of the borderlands. The encyclopaedia also considers the formation of Soviet institutions, and examines, too, the emergence of revolutionary culture well before 1917, the avant-garde in art and theatre, and the relationship to the revolution of three major Russian writers, Blok, Gorky and Mayakovsky.

    Documents the fight of the communist opposition from 1923 to 1929 against the reactionary political and economic policies of the rising bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union.