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The controversy over the origins of the Russian Revolution
continues unabated and has acquired a particularly direct
and vital relevance after the disintegration of the State
which the October Revolution engendered. During the late
1980s inside Russia itself it became increasingly apparent
that the traditional Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy was no
longer acceptable. Many Russian analysts and politicians
nowadays reject the reductionist ‘red and white’ approach,
as well as a rigidly determinist view of the revolution. |
Some tend to
see the period between February and October as being pregnant with a
number of different possibilities, including a bourgeois-democratic
option (epitomized by Kerensky’s ministry), a military dictatorship
(under Kornilov’s command), an all-socialist coalition government
(such as a ‘homogeneous socialist government’ advocated by moderate
socialist leaders like Martov), and the radical left alternative
associated with Lenin and his Bolsheviks.
It was this
last alternative which eventually became the reality. It is hardly
possible to single out one decisive factor of the Bolshevik triumph
in October 1917. It came about as a result of the combination of
different factors, including the inability of the Provisional
Government to rule decisively at the time of a national crisis, the
unwillingness of the propertied classes to satisfy expectations of
the working classes, the radicalism of the latter, the support of
the Bolsheviks by garrison troops in major cities, the confusion in
the ranks of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, the
political skills and determination of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin
and Trotsky.
