is that the objective historical situation made a Bolshevik triumph possible. But the question is: what transformed the possibility into an actuality? Could that possibility have been lost? Why in fact was it not lost?
His answer rises out of every crucial page where he is discussing events and not defending a faith. It was not lost because of the leadership of Lenin. But this answer gives Lenin such stature as an event-making figure in history that it flouts a cherished dogma of Trotsky’s Marxism. In consequence, when Trotsky is compelled by his own narrative to face the question squarely, his reply takes the form of a series of stammering evasions. A “yes” alternates with a “no” in a kind of double talk that defies even the mystical logic of dialectic and peters out lamely in a change of subject. The general upshot of the key passage is a cautious admission that without Lenin the October Revolution might not have occurred. But this is immediately counteracted by subsequent passages in which Trotsky denies the legitimacy of the very question he has asked and tried to answer.
It remains to ask—and this is no unimportant question, although easier to ask than to answer: How would the revolution have developed if Lenin had not reached Russia in April, 1917? If our exposition demonstrates and proves anything at all, we hope it proves that Lenin was not a demiurge of the revolutionary process, that he merely (!) entered into a chain of objective historical forces. But he was a great link in that chain. The dictatorship of the proletariat was to be inferred from the whole situation, but it still had to be established. It could not be established without a party. The party could fulfil its mission only after understanding it. For that Lenin was needed. Until his arrival, not one of the Bolshevik leaders dared to make a diagnosis of the revolution…. Inner struggle in the Bolshevik Party was absolutely unavoidable. Lenin’s arrival merely (!) hastened the process. His personal influence shortened the crisis. Is it possible, however, to say confidently that the party without him would have found its road? We would by no means make bold to say that. The factor of time is decisive hem and it is difficult in retrospect to tell time historically. Dialectic materialism at any rate has nothing in common with fatalism.[1]
- ↑ Op. cit., vol. I., pp. 329–30. See also vol. III., p. 154.
