АКТУАЛЬНЫЕ ВОПРОСЫ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ НАУКИ RETHINKING THE CATEGORY OF REVOLUTION S.G. Ilinskaya The Department of the History of Political Philosophy The Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences Volkhonka str., 14/1, Moscow, Russia, 119991 The subject of the study is the category of revolution. <...> The author tries to understand how revolution as a legitimate government overthrow of a sovereign nation works as a concept in current political situation. <...> In her view, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran it becomes quite impossible to classify the revolution as the bourgeois and socialist, since 1991 — to talk about it in line with the theory of change of social formations. <...> In her article the author analyzes the results of the overthrow of the government during the revolution as a legitimate act, and explains why, in her view, the concept of the revolution is “dead”. <...> As the methods of investigation the author used comparative, historical method, and methods of analytic philosophy. <...> The main conclusion of the study is the exhaustion of modern concept of revolution because of its ambiguity and elevated semantic load, which are stretching the notion of enabling and legitimizing any illegal overthrow of the government, including those which are not in the interests of “sovereign nation”. <...> The concept of revolution in the way in which we are accustomed to perceive it, has exhausted itself, because it consists of continuous fiction, but in today's world radically change the structure of suppression and oppression. <...> Р. 258] of “oranges”, “roses” and “tulips” (The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, 2004, The Rose Revolution in Georgia, 2003, The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, 2005), I have a lot of doubts over the use of this concept in the course of recent “Arab spring”, referring to the ultra-right take-overs in Europe between the world wars, and to the situation in modern Ukraine. <...> In particular, Mark Neocleous uses the term “revolution”, analyzing the transformations in Germany in the first third 63 Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 2 of the XXth century: revolution, revolution I (revolution against revolution), revolution II (revolution against the revolution I) [21]. <...> Forced change of current social and political system? <...> In order to avoid bogging down in the details, nuances and intricacies of different definitions, I will start from the modern general notion of revolution as the «“legitimate” overthrow of current authority by the sovereign citizens» [12. <...> Those, who want to go deeply into discussion for some details always could turn <...>