October 1917 and the Tradition of Revolution

Abstract

N recent article in these pages, and elsewhere, Professor Robert Daniels has argued the accidental nature of the October Revolution. He has called it a freak accident, a series of unpredictable events that diverted Russia from the customary course of modern revolution and paved the way for the unique phenomenon of twentieth century communism.' It is possible and legitimate even necessary to balance the record-to argue the accidental nature of every historical event. But it is also constriction of perspective to do so. For to ask where given historical event stands in relation to others of its kind; what kind of historical turning point, if any, it represents; what general trends or forces it embodies or creates, allows us to see more clearly discrete events and the broader currents of history, as well as their possible relationships. An attempt to go beyond the accidental view of the Bolshevik victory is no endorsement of its interpretation as the foreordained outcome of historical laws. It is an effort to see where the October Revolution stands in the tradition or line of the great and classic revolutions, which some have seen as starting in Puritan England, destined to traverse Europe, sweeping on to China and now touching the southeastern fringes of Asia.2 And it is an effort to ask if, indeed, there is such tradition. The notion that what happened on the frontiers of Europe in