Paul Rivlin, an economist and senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, says Egypt is a wreck and that insight can be drawn from the two consecutive revolutions in Russia.

The February Revolution of 1917 toppled the Russian monarchy and established a provisional government which was overthrown in October 1917 by the Bolshevik revolution led by Vladimir Lenin.

Rivlin however, points to differences with the present situation in Egypt. He says the country’s intelligentsia is made up of a significant young minority that does not support Morsi’s undemocratic actions, and that this group wields strength beyond its numbers.

But “the football riots and train crashes – all disasters of the old regime – continue because nothing has really changed,” he said. The “fundamental point” is that the regime is unable “to change the reality of people on the ground.”