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THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A TEST CASE
The thesis of this chapter is that had it not been for the work of one man we should be living in a vastly different world to-day.
There are four stages to the argument. The first is that, next to the First World War, the most momentous occurrence of the twentieth century has been the Russian Revolution of October, 1917. By “most momentous” we mean that it has had a greater influence on the political, social, and economic history of the world since its occurrence than any other single event. The second step in the argument is that the Russian Revolution was not inevitable. The third is that it was triumphant because of the directing leadership of Lenin and that without him it would have been lost. The fourth is that if the Russian Revolution had not taken place the cultural, political, and, in part, the economic life of the world would have been very different.
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The Russian Revolution of February, 1917, which destroyed Czarism and moved toward the introduction of democratic political forms on the Western model was unplanned but historically expected. The October Revolution of 1917, which destroyed political democracy and substituted minority party dictatorship in its stead, was planned but historically unexpected.
This seeming paradox is easily explained. Whereas all political groups, except pensioners of the court and other reactionary elements, anticipated the downfall of the autocracy through a “February” Revolution at almost any moment after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, no one dreamed of an “October” Revolution as a realistic possibility as late as ten months before its actual occurrence. This goes without saying for those who were later to oppose the October Revolution. But not even the Bolsheviks themselves, who carried out the Revolution and who were committed to a belief in the historical inevitability of proletarian dictatorship, had any inkling that their chance would come so soon. Their belief in proletarian dictatorship was a theoretical and programmatic commitment—part of a doctrine
