"Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the most thoughtful historians of [the French Revolution], notes that the French monarchy sowed the seeds of its own demise by destroying the regional parliaments, institutions that the French thought were just as ancient and just as unchangeable as the monarchy itself. After the king dispersed the parliaments both in Paris and in the regions, the French people concluded that everything, including a more democratic system, was possible. Something similar, [Abbas] Gallyamov argues, is now possible in Russia today."