8
PARTISAN REVIEW
and limits
oj
liberty and democracy. He can remind us
oj
another, different
Russia,
the
one
thot
might have
been;
and thus, implicitly,
oj
a different Latin
America,
the
one
thot
still might
be.
Enrique Krauze:
How would you identify the principal causes of the
historical failure of liberalism in Russia? Why did it lack intellec–
tual and political effectiveness?
Isaiah Berlin:
...
It
is usually said that the reason for the failure of
the liberals was that there was no bourgeoisie in Russia, that there
was no class whose needs liberals could express, nor one from
which they sprang-in which they had their personal and institu–
tional roots .... I don't believe this to be accurate.
The middle class was rather small, it's perfectly true-even
though it had grown during the very rapid industrial expansion in
the 1890s, but it had influence and even authority far beyond its
numbers. The late Professor Vladimir Karpovich (of Harvard),
who maintained this about both the right and the left wing of the
liberals, seems to me to have been right.
According to Marxist analysis, a revolution in Russia, if it
were to succeed, would need, as we all know, a highly industrial–
ized economy, which generates a proletariat increasingly con–
scious, perhaps under the influence of Marxist thinkers ....
Only very bold Marxists openly rejected the rigorous histori–
cal determinism of Marx and Engels. Of course, Trotsky and
Parvus .tried to make out that there could be a revolution in
Russia because of the "weakest link" theory, which means that
you don't require a large proletariat, only a feeble bourgeoisie; if
the bourgeoisie cannot offer much resistance it doesn't matter
quite so much whether the proletaFiat does or does not form a
decisive majority. That is a very sharp deviation from anything
Marx or Engels ever said. Indeed, at least after 1850, Engels
warned against precisely this kind of attempt to rebel too soon.
However, these are matters of theory. The October Revolu–
tion occurred, it succeeded against great odds and generated the
present Soviet Union.
If
you ask why the liberals failed, this was
to some degree simply because, in accordance with their princi–
ples, they were not prepared to use the violent methods used by
the Bolsheviks.
The events of the last two hundred years have shown that a
