The Revolutionary Nature of the Russian Revolution

Abstract

Russian Revolution may be seen in three various ways. Firstly, as an event in the history of Russia, which was caused by its inherent properties and social and political attributes, particular circumstances, contradictions and obstacles in its historical growth. Secondly, as an incident of Russian history which fi ts into a more general pattern of revolutionary events, but which also may serve as its distinct “sample”, a lesson, a warning for the rest of the world; Russian Revolution thus would reveal more general rules, threats and controversies of social development, thereby suggesting to other societies the necessary preventive acts which would allow them to avoid the catastrophe of revolution. Th irdly, Russian Revolution may be seen as a structural element of a wider revolutionary process, an element that may be indispensable and essential; this universal context is not seen (as previously) in terms of an independent, though analogous example of revolutionary event, but as the decisive environment of Russian Revolution; in this take, we speak of the socialist, proletarian (and before that, bourgeois) nature of the Russian Revolution, of the way it fulfi lled the Marxist theory and vision of history (though with a necessity of Western, universal adjustment), or cruelly and irrevocably falsifi ed Marxist utopia. The article is devoted to these three interpretations of the problem.