ISAIAH BERLIN
9
hard minority often succeeds against a soft majority. There is no
doubt that the tsarist regime had been utterly discredited; that the
war had greatly weakened its resources; that the middle class was
not united by a single, coherent ideology. Turgenev had been a
good spokesman for this class. He was a man who detested reac–
tionaries and was terrified of the young radicals of his day. This is
a well-known predicament of liberals, everywhere, at all times.
Many members of the progressive Russian bourgeoisie were in
this predicament. On the one hand they disliked the tsarist
regime, hated tyranny, were against the ignorant and oppressive
Church. On the other hand they thought that the revolutionary
radicals were violent, fanatical, unscrupulous, and ruthless: they
had ideals but no clear policies. In such situations small minor–
ities can turn the scale.
This is not the first time that this has happened. I don't know
how many ideologically convinced, believing fascists there were in
Italy in 1922. The usual explanation is that the Italian bourgeoisie
was afraid of the growth of communism and that is why it did not
resist fascism. Well, you could say equally well that in Russia the
liberal bourgeoisie was afraid of the return of the hated tsarist sys–
tem, and therefore was not prepared to resist the Bolsheviks too
much, because the Bolsheviks seemed to run the extreme left wing
of what they regarded as, in some sense, their own side.
If you ask me why the liberals were crushed by the Bolsheviks,
although you may think me very naive, I wish to make it clear that I
do not accept the view that the explanation of historical events must
always lie in the role played by class conflict. This situation does, of
course, happen, but not always. Class conflict did not make the
National-Socialist revolution in Germany and the Fascist revolution
in Italy inevitable: they could, I believe, have been avoided.
If,
for
example, the Communists had worked with the Social Democrats in
Germany, the Nazi victory might have been prevented. If the British
and the French had threatened, as they might well have done, to reoc–
cupy the Rhineland in 1936, it might have been prevented. If you ask
why these powers did not intervene-well, you can, of course, always
say that everything that happens must inevitably happen because the
people who are involved are what they are, but that is to<? fatalistic for
me. I
think
that in 1936 the English and French,
if
they had had
braver and wiser leaders, could have discredited the Nazi leaders. I
think in 1931-33 the Social Democrats and the Communists could
