Here the possibility is always present that events from other series of happenings might erupt into the series we are considering, like comets that crash into a solar system and upset its otherwise calculable behaviour. But we are entitled to make a rough chart of what might have been on the basis of what we already know. If this is disputed in principle, as we have seen, the possibility of all grounded prediction in human and historical affairs must be ruled out.
If the Bolsheviks had lost their golden hour, the left Social Revolutionaries together with some anarchist groups might have attempted to seize power. But it is extremely unlikely that they could have achieved more than a noisy disturbance. They had no organizational discipline and could hardly formulate, much less execute, a centralized plan of control. Even in the unlikely event of victory, their programme would have stopped where that of the Bolsheviks began—with the land in the hands of the peasants.
The Russian military front would have collapsed anyhow. The truth was that, by the end of 1917, there was no military front. The Germans could have advanced at will at any time. An armistice with Germany was unavoidable no matter who constituted the government. The Constituent Assembly, Russia’s parliamentary democracy, which was bayoneted out of existence at its first session by the Bolsheviks, would in all likelihood have converted Russia into a constitutional republic on the model of France and England. The preponderance of Socialist sentiment guaranteed a highly advanced system of social legislation. The banks and some of the basic public services and industries would probably have been socialized, but there would have been no collectivization of industry. The Russian market would have been opened as a vast field for European industry. The catastrophic world crisis which began in 1928 would have probably been delayed, and in any event its effects appreciably mitigated when it did occur. Fascist parties would have existed as political sects, but Fascism as a mass movement would not have developed in the face of a united European working class.
Even without the October Revolution, the danger of war would not have been removed. For conflicts between national economies for the exploitation of the world market would still have continued in the absence of some form of planned economy to undergird a world political union. In the east, developments would have been pretty much the same as they were, particularly
