to the rise of Fascism. Without the Russian Revolution, there would have been a Hitler movement anyway but it would not have triumphed. The worst alternative realizable in Germany would have been a period of reaction similar to other conservative swings of the past. But in time, unable to overcome the crisis endemic to capitalism, a conservative régime would have had to make way for German social democracy, instructed and strengthened by previous defeats, or it would have been compelled to pit itself against the overwhelming mass of the German people in open revolt.
2 and 3
However we assess the casual significance of the Russian Revolution for subsequent European development, we must face the position which asserts that the October Revolution was inevitable. The term “inevitable” in this connection is ambiguous. Even those who use it do not mean it literally. What they do mean is that, given its social and economic antecedents, the October Revolution was overwhelmingly the most likely of all the relevant historical possibilities. This is the view of the orthodox Marxists of the Leninist persuasion. It is a view, however, that can be held independently of their political programme and certainly demands consideration.
The denial that the Russian Revolution was inevitable in the light of Russian social and economic development entails the belief that some other factor was of primary importance. On our hypothesis this factor was the presence of an event-making individual—Lenin. Those who uphold the thesis of inevitability admit that Lenin’s presence may have been necessary as far as the calendar date of the Russian Revolution was concerned, but, in conformity with their general philosophy of history, affirm that even without him “it would necessarily have come sooner or later.” Since our denial of the inevitability of the Russian Revolution is made on the grounds that an event-making personality decided the issue, and that in his absence from the scene events would have fallen out quite differently with profoundly different consequences to the world, the second and third steps of our argument will be considered together.
The contention that the Russian Revolution was historically inevitable rests upon two main lines of evidence. The first consists in the accumulation of data which indicate that, although
