longer such a state of affairs dragged on, the greater became the contradiction between the needs of economic and cultural development and the policy of the Government, which had developed its mighty ‘milliard-fold’ inertia. After the epoch of the ‘great patchwork reforms’ – which not only did not eliminate these contradictions but on the contrary for the first time vividly revealed them – had been left behind, it became ever more difficult, and psychologically ever more impossible, for the Government voluntarily to take the path of parliamentarism. The only way out of these contradictions which its situation indicated to society was through the accumulation of sufficient steam within the boiler of absolutism to burst it.
Thus, the administrative, military and financial power of absolutism, thanks to which it could exist in spite of social development, not only did not exclude the possibility of revolution, as was the opinion of the liberals. but, on the contrary, made revolution the only way out; furthermore, this revolution was guaranteed in advance an all the more radical character in proportion as the great might of absolutism dug an abyss between itself and the nation. Russian Marxism can justly be proud of having alone explained the direction of this development and foretold its general forms [3], while the liberals fed themselves on the most utopian ‘practicalism’ and the revolutionary ‘Narodniki’ lived on phantasmagoria and a belief in miracles.
The entire preceding social development made revolution inevitable. What, then, were the forces of this revolution?
Notes 1. i.e., a section of pre-capitalist society possessing formally laid down rights and duties. cf. the ‘third estate’, i.e., those who were neither nobles nor clergy, in pre-revolutionary France. – Trans.
2. It is sufficient to recall the characteristic features of the original relations between the State and the school to realize that the latter was, at the very least, just as ‘artificial’ product of the State as the factory was. The educational efforts of the State illustrate this ‘artificiality’. Pupils who played truant were put in chains. The whole school was in chains. Study was a form of service. Pupils were paid wages, etc.. etc. – L.T.
3. Even such a reactionary bureaucrat as Professor Mendeleyev cannot but admit this. Speaking about the development of industry, he observes: ‘The socialists perceived something here and even partly understood it, bugt went astray, following their Latinism [!], recommending resort to force, pandering to the brutal instincts of the mob and striving toward revolutions and power.’ (Towards the Understanding of Russia, p.120)
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