Russia: how does a revolution begin?

Karl Marx said that sometimes nothing seems to change for twenty years. Then comes a day when more happens than in the preceding quiet decades. In history, the change has always come.

I am historian, not a fortune-teller. Yet as a historian it came to my mind that after the Japanese war 1904–1905 it was not the socialist leaders and revolutionaries who stirred up the unhappy Russian people to revolt. In St. Petersburg there was one cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church, Father Georgy Apollonovitch Gabon, who was a key organizer of the demonstration.

It was this peaceful protest to which the tsar responded bloodily but which, however, opened the path to the final collapse of the whole Russian empire.

We never know what will ignite the revolt and revolutions. Restricting political rights, destroying free media, and an oppression of opposition with other ugly means of dictatorial powers, can postpone the moment of change. Yet in history, the change has always come.

Karl Marx said that sometimes nothing seems to change for twenty years. Then comes a day when more happens than in the preceding quiet decades.