The focus of Benjamin Beuerle's study on the western orientation in Russian political life encompasses the various ways the interest in western developments and practices entered the debates in the Russian State Duma during efforts to pass reform legislation (1905–17). He carefully points out the difficulty in defining various concepts of the west, the distinct west European countries and parliamentary forms of government that were used in the Duma debates.

The book is organized to accommodate the research on three specific Duma debates and the importance of these issues in the west. After an introductory chapter to set the historical stage for the creation of the Duma, Beuerle devotes a chapter to each of them: one on the peasant land reforms from 1906 to 1908, the second on the need for health insurance for the working class, and third, the debate on abolishing the death penalty that took place in the first session of the duma in 1906. Since the death penalty had not been abolished in western European countries and the United States, the author points out one reform movement that was not based on a western model; nevertheless, the debates in the Duma were filled with references to western commentaries on the death penalty. The analysis is complicated by the fact, however, that executions were used much more frequently just after the 1905 Revolution when military courts were used for political cases and the number of executions soared. In the first six months of 1906, 770 people sentenced to death. This overuse of the death penalty made its abolition a most urgent issue for both the educated elite and the working class and peasants.

Beuerle clearly states his conviction that the form and activities of the Duma and State Council provide significant evidence that a viable western-type governmental order was developing and functioning with increasing effectiveness before the outbreak of World War I. He falls into the category of optimists in looking at the political and social developments in Russia after 1907. Beurle states that he will have achieved a great deal if his book succeeds in contributing to the view that a burgeoning political culture existed between 1905 and 1917. He insists it was this growing political order and its developmental potential along a European course of progress that was disrupted and ultimately buried by a series of violent social and political upheavals—the World War, the Bolshevik Dictatorship, the Civil War, and the Terror (337). Beuerle emphasizes and possibly overstates what he considers the growing pro-western direction in Russian society. He does not shed enough light on the strong anti-western elements in Russian society nor the inordinate power of the Tsar who was allowed by law to shut down the Duma and call for new elections in order to change the political face of the Duma just after seventy-two days of meetings.

Curiously, the author's research on specific Duma debates only covers the early part of the period discussed; the land reform debates he includes end in 1908 and does not address the specifically Russian issues involving the obshchina. The death penalty debates end in 1906, when the anti-death penalty bill passed unanimously in the Duma; it did not become law, however, because it was not passed in the State Council, nor did it gain the Tsar's approval.

In his conclusion, Beuerle openly argues against Leopold Haimson, who considered the imperial social and political orders after 1907 set to collapse even without the strains caused by World War I. Beuerle uses his narrowly-focused studies on Duma debates as a forum to challenge the more broadly based, multifaceted, interdisciplinary work of Leopold Haimson on the fragmentation and dual polarizations in Russian society in the pre-revolutionary era. The author wants to contradict what he calls the “dominant” school in Russian History; he rejects the Haimson school's findings that World War I did not enable the Revolution of 1917, but because of the increasing pre-war polarization and crisis in society, the war probably delayed the outbreak of the revolution by several years.

Beuerle emphasizes that Russian developments were leading to the creation of a viable constitutional order in the 1905–17 era, which was destroyed by WWI. His description of the importance of the western orientation in the debates, daily activities, and parliamentary work in the Russian legislature gives the reader a comprehensive view of the workings of the Russian parliament. His careful analysis of the efforts to pass reform legislation in the Duma does paint an important portrait of a society searching to create its own political and legal culture. Whether this focus on Duma actions and reforms justifies the rejection of Haimson's complex analysis of the social stability and polarizations in pre-war Russia is open to a more nuanced and fuller debate.