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The greatest shocks suffered by revolutionary movements occur in the blossoming of revolution or in its defeat. The experience of the Russian Revolution of 1905–07 and of the period that followed, described by contemporary radical commentators as a "reaction," is a case in point. In a half-dozen years the revolutionaries traveled the road that led from a promising, growing movement to actual revolution in which the parameters of their field of action expanded rapidly and then contracted to an environment of retrenchment and disillusionment. The effects of this experience upon individuals and organizations have not, however, received meaningful attention from historians or social scientists. An understanding of the experience of defeat is as significant as an understanding of the experience of success in the perception of revolutionary movements.

A major problem in the civic integration of new states is the quickening of "primordial attachments" based on ties of blood, race, language, region, religion or custom. These attachments give rise to separatist, irredentist or factional groupings whose claims to recognition and autonomy cut across the claims of civic unity based on a common national territory.