Like the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Revolution caught almost everyone off guard. Contrary to Marxist-Leninist dogma, the Bolsheviks’ victory resulted not from communism’s alleged inevitability but rather from a series of coincidences and accidents that could have been otherwise.

Paul R. Gregory is the Cullen Professor of Economics at the University of Houston, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin.
Economic PolicyEconomyGovernment and PoliticsPhilosophy and ReligionPolitical HistorySocialism, Communism, and Collectivism
Other Independent Review articles by Paul R. Gregory
Spring 2018 One Day We Will Live without Fear: Everyday Lives Under the Soviet Police State
Spring 2009 The Ship of Philosophers: How the Early USSR Dealt with Dissident Intellectuals