States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China is a 1979 book by political scientist and sociologist Theda Skocpol, published by Cambridge University Press, which explains the causes of social revolutions. In the book, Skocpol performs a comparative historical analysis of the French Revolution of 1789 through the early 19th century, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Skocpol argues that social revolutions occurred in these states because of the simultaneous occurrence of state breakdown and peasant revolution at the same time.