# Three "Whys" of the Russian Revolution - Author: [Richard Pipes](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes.md) - Quotes: 12 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution ## Quotes > The Empire was traditionally run by a bureaucracy and a gentry, after 1880 reinforced by a political-police organization. This political policing was a Russian invention; Russia was the first country to have two police systems, one to protect the state from its citizens, and the other to protect the citizens from each other. Subsequently, this dual structure became a fundamental feature of totalitarian states. p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/the-empire-was.md) > According to Marx, the evolution of capitalism would inevitably lead to the pauperization of the proletariat and then, just as inevitably, to its radicalization. It is interesting that Bento Mussolini arrived at an identical judgment ten years later. Before the outbreak of the first World War, Mussolini had been the closest analogue to Lenin in the European socialist movement, being equally revolutionary and anti-reformist. He was the Lenin of the Italian Socialist Party with the difference that, whereas Mussolini managed to rally behind him a revolutionary majority and expel the reformers, in Russia, Lenin found himself leading a minority and forced to break away from the Social-Democratic Establishment. p. 36 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/according-to-marx.md) > We cannot determine whether or not he had met Lenin during their common exile in Switzerland; Mussolini once cryptically remarked: ‘Lenin knew me better than I knew him.’ p. 37 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/we-cannot-determine.md) > Lenin wanted power. This may sound self-evident; after all, every politician is assumed to lust for power. But deep down, Lenin’s rivals did not want it. p. 42 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/lenin-wanted-power.md) > The purpose of totalitarian parties, for which Bolshevism provided the model, was not to become the government, but to manipulate the government from behind the scenes. p. 39 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/the-purpose-of-totalitarian.md) > Studying Russian history from the West European perspective, one also becomes conscious of the effect that the absence of feudalism had on Russia. Feudalism had created in the West networks of economic and political institutions that served the central state, once it replaced the feudal system, as a source of social support and relative stability. Russia knew no feudalism in the traditional sense of the word, since, after the emergence of the Muscovite monarchy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, all landowners were tenants-in-chief of the Crown, and subinfeudation was unknown. As a result, all power was concentrated in the Crown. p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/studying-russian-history.md) > Another advantage of Lenin’s derived from the fact that he did not care about Russia. He cared about Germany and England in the sense that, for him, as a revolutionary, they were the key countries. Russian he viewed as nothing more than a stepping-stone to global upheaval;… p. 43 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/another-advantage-of-lenins.md) > By 1921 it had become clear to all but the more incorrigible optimists that there would be no repetition of October 1917 anywhere else and that for an indeterminate period the revolution would remain confined to Russia and her possessions. The concept of ‘socialism in one country’ was not launched by Stalin in his conflict with Trotsky, but earlier by Lenin himself. p. 72 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/by-1921-it-had.md) > Last but not least, the factor which prevented Trotsky from succeeding Lenin was his Jewishness. Trotsky hated to be reminded that he was a Jew. Whenever anybody come to him asking him to help other Jews, he would explode in anger and insist that he was not a Jew but an ‘internationalist.’ On one occasion he said that the fate of the Jews concerned him as little as the fate of the Bulgarians. p. 81 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/last-but-not.md) > Because he did not care about his country, Lenin was prepared to promise everybody whatever they wanted without giving much thought to the future. The peasants wanted private land for their communes? Let them take it: eventually all the land will be confiscated and collectivized anyway. Until then, ‘looting the loot’ will win over, or at least neutralize, the peasantry. The workers demand to run the factories? Even though ‘workers’ control is a detestable syndico-anarchist slogan, there is no harm in granting their desires—for the time being. Once industries have been nationalized and subjected to general economic plan of production, ‘workers’ control’ will vanish of itself. p. 44 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/because-he-did.md) > The collapse of the Soviet Union, a state which appeared as solidly entrenched to us as the tsarist Empire did in its day, was not triggered by social unrest: there were no strike waves, no massive demonstrations, no widespread violence. The USSR disintegrated because of political decisions made at the top. p. 14 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/the-collapse-of-the.md) > The party which Lenin forged and led was really not a party, in the customary sense of the word. It was more of an ‘order,’ in the sense in which Hitler called his National-Socialist Party ‘ein Orden,’ bound by the members’ unshakable loyalty to their leader and one another, but subject to no other principle and responsible to no other constituency. Genuine political parties strive to enlarge their membership, whereas these pseudo-parties—the Bolshevik one first, and the Fascist and the Nazi ones later—were exclusive in that they treated membership as a privilege, restricting it to persons who met certain ideological as well as class or racial criteria. Elements regarded as unworthy were purged. p. 38 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-pipes/three-whys-of-the-russian-revolution/the-party-which.md)