The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not the revolution of the most advanced capitalist societies predicted by Karl Marx. As Hobsbawm puts it, "Capitalism had proved far easier to overthrow where it was weak or barely existed than in its heartlands." (ibid. p.82) Even within Russia, Hobsbawm doubts the ostensibly "progressive" effects of the revolution: "What remained [after revolution and civil war] was a Russia even more firmly anchored in the past... [W]hat actually governed the country was an undergrowth of smaller and larger bureaucracy, on average even less educated and qualified than before." (ibid. p.379)
It is a central thesis of Hobsbawm's book that, from the start, State Communism betrayed the socialist and internationalist vision it claimed to uphold. In particular, State Communism always dispensed with the democratic element of the socialist vision: "Lenin... concluded from the start that the liberal horse was not a runner in the Russian revolutionary race." (ibid. p.58) This anti-liberalism ran deep. In 1933, with Benito Mussolini firmly in control of Italy, "Moscow insisted that the Italian communist leader P. Togliatti withdraw the suggestion that, perhaps, social-democracy was not the primary danger, at least in Italy." (ibid. p.104)
