The Unfinished Revolution Quotes

“That so many revolutionary efforts have been frustrated or have proved abortive does not invalidate the premise on which they acted. Men engaged in combat do not take defeat for granted before the battle is joined — it is in the actual fighting that the outcome of the struggle is decided.”
― Isaac Deutscher, The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917-67

“The historian who labours to reduce the mountain of the revolution to a few contingencies, stands as helpless before it as once stood the political leaders who sought to prevent its rise.”
― Isaac Deutscher, The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917-67

“We need not assume that the course of the Russian revolution was predetermined in all its features or in the sequence of all its major phases and incidents. But its general direction had been set not by the events of a few years or months; it had been prepared by the developments of many decades, even several epochs. The historian who labours to reduce the mountain of the revolution to a few contingencies, stands as helpless before it as once stood the political leaders who sought to prevent its rise.”
― Isaac Deutscher, The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917-67