Leon Trotsky: 1905

Leon Trotsky: 1905: CHAPTER 1-- Russia's Social Development and Tsarism
Leon Trotsky's
1905
CHAPTER 1
Russia's Social Development and Tsarism
* * *
Our revolution [I am speaking of the revolution of 1905 and of the changes it introduced into Russia's
social and political life: the forming of parties, representation in the Duma, open political struggle, etc.]
destroyed the myth of the "uniqueness" of Russia. It demonstrated that history does not have special laws
for Russia. Yet at the same time the Russian revolution bore a character wholly peculiar to itself, a
character which was the out come of the special features of our entire social and historical development
and which, in turn, opened entirely new historical perspectives before us.
There is no need to dwell on the metaphysical question of whether the difference between Russia and
Western Europe is a "qualitative" or a "quantitative" one. But neither can there be any doubt that the
principal distinguishing characteristics of Russia's historical development are its slowness and its
primitive nature. In point of fact, the Russian state is not all that much younger than the European states;
the chronicle of Russia's life as a state begins in the year 862. Yet the extremely slow rate of our
economic development, determined by unfavorable natural conditions and a sparse population, has
delayed the process of social crystallization and has stamped the whole of our history with the features of
extreme backwardness.
It is hard to tell how the life of the Russian state would have developed if it had taken place in isolation,
influenced by internal tendencies alone. Suffice it to say that this was not the case. Russia's social
existence was always under constant pressure from the more developed social and state relations of
Western Europe, and as time went on this pressure became more and more powerful. Given the relatively
weak development of international trade, a decisive role was played by military relations between states.
First and foremost, the social influence of Europe found expression in the form of military technology.
The Russian state, having been formed on a primitive economic basis, was brought face to face with stare
organizations -which had developed on a higher economic basis. Two possible presented themselves the
Russian state had either to fall in struggle with those state organizations, as the Golden Horde fallen in
the struggle with Muscovite Tsardom, or it had to the development of its own economic relations,
swallow- up, under pressure from outside, a disproportionately large of the nation's vital juices. The
Russian national economy was no longer primitive enough to allow of the former solution. The state did
not collapse; it began to grow, at the price of monstrous pressure upon the nation's economic forces.
Up to a certain point all the above also applies, of course, to any other European state. The difference is
that in their mutual struggle .for existence those states could draw on economic bases of an
approximately equal kind, so that their development as states was not subject to such powerful and
economically intolerable outside pressures.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1905/ch01.htm (1 of 5) [06/06/2002 13:41:29]