It is an irony of fate that the same revolution which purports to enact into life the Marxian social program should belie the truth of Marx’s materialistic interpretation of history and demonstrate that history is shaped by both economic and non-economic forces.  Marx, as is well known, taught that history is a struggle between classes, in which the landed aristocracy, the capitalist class, and the wage earning class are raised successively to rulership as, with the progress of society’s technical equipment, first one and then another class can operate it with the maximum efficiency.  Marx assumed that when the time has arrived for a given economic class to take the helm, that class will be found in full possession of all the psychological attributes of a ruling class, namely, an indomitable will to power, no less than the more vulgar desire for the emoluments that come with power.  Apparently, Marx took for granted that economic evolution is inevitably accompanied by a corresponding development of an effective will to power in the class destined to rule.  Yet, whatever may be the case in the countries of the West, in Russia the ruling classes, the gentry and the capitalists, clearly failed in the psychological test at the critical time.  This failure is amply attested by the manner in which they submitted practically without a fight after the Bolshevist coup d’etat.

To get at the secret of this apparent feebleness and want of spunk in Russia’s ruling class one must study a peculiarity of her history, namely, the complete dominance of Russia’s development by organized government.  Where the historian of the Western countries must take account of several independent forces, each standing for a social class, the Russian historian may well afford to station himself on the high peak of government and, from this point of vantage, survey the hills and vales of the society which it so thoroughly dominated.

Apolitism runs like a red thread through the pages of Russian history.  Even the upper layer of the old noble class, the “Boyars,” were but a shadow of the Western contemporary medieval landed aristocracy.  When the several principalities became united with the Czardom of Muscovy many centuries ago, the Boyar was in fact no more than a steward of the Czar’s estate and a leader of a posse defending his property; the most he dared to do was surreptitiously to obstruct the carrying out of the Czar’s intentions; he dared not try to impose the will of his class upon the crown.  The other classes were even more apolitical.  So little did the several classes aspire to domination that they missed many golden opportunities to seize and hold a share of the political power.  In the seventeenth century, when the government was exceptionally weak after what is known as the “period of troubles,” it convoked periodical “assemblies of the land” to help administer the country.  But, as a matter of fact, these assemblies considered themselves ill