Marx-Engels' Thesis on the Russian Revolution

Abstract

Marx and Engels claimed that the Russian rural community succeeded in securing the positive result which capitalist production accomplished for humanity, owing to its contemporaneousness with the capitalism of Western Europe, explaining at the same time its critical and transitional nature, and that it could attain a higher form of society even when it may not have gone through the capitalist form of production. They indicated also that in order to let the rural community ibe the foundation for a reform of the Russian society, a "Russian revolution" (Marx), or the "proletarian revolution of Western Europe" (Engels) was essential. Russian was the stongest and last citadel for reactionaries. So, no proletarian revolution of Western Europe could be hoped without demolishing it. Of course, the condition required for attaining this purpose was being ful-filled within the country itself to accelerate the realization of revolution. In other words, the Russian revolution conceived by Marx and Engels for the revival of the rural community was an internal incentive for the "Minoritatsrevolutionen" by a small number of intellectuals. The Russian revolution, therefore, was not only a factor in the nationally circumscribed scheme for revolution, but a connecting link in the revolutionay plan for the entire Europe.