China Russia

In the spring of 2009, Simon Pridmore and his wife Sofie travelled for 15,000 kilometres overland through Russia, Mongolia, and China. A trip that started off as an adventure ended up being an education. Everywhere they stopped, they found people and cultures on the cusp of change. This was a watershed period for many nations that found themselves having to deal with the challenges of a new century, while still recovering from the consequences of the tumultuous events of the previous one.

The modern world has been marked by a series of immense social revolutions that have transformed the states where they happened. In 1979, American sociologist Theda Skocpol published States and Social Revolutions and examined three of these uprisings: in France at the end of the 18th century, then in Russia and in China in the first half of the 20th century. She pinpointed a number of common factors that affected each of these countries at the time revolution happened.