Based on wide-ranging empirical research, the book stresses broad popular support for the Bolshevik program calling for peace, land, and bread and transfer of power to the soviets, as well as the party's tolerance of diverse views and its decentralized organizational structure in explaining its successful accession to power in October.
According to Professor Victoria Bunnell in the American Journal of Sociology, "the sociologist whose interest lie in the fields of revolution, social movements, and labor policy will find...[it] highly valuable.
"[5] According to Professor Paul M. Johnson in The American Political Science Review, the book represents, "important new contributions to the literature....Solidly grounded in the traditional historiography...[making] judicious use of the valuable materials that became accessible during the Khrushchev era.
"[6] In 2007, following decades of archival research and writing, Rabinowitch published The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd.
[7] Rabinowitch set for himself the twin goals of explaining how the Bolshevik party was relatively quickly "transformed into one of the most highly centralized authoritarian political organizations in modern history" and the rapidity with which the grass-roots egalitarian ideals that contributed immeasurably to its effectiveness in the struggle for power in 1917 Russia were subverted.