'La rivoluzione russa un segnale per gli operai d'Occidente'

“In 1877, before the Russian Marxists had raised their head, Engels had recognized the possibility in favourable conditions of the direct transformation of the communal system into a higher form, “avoiding the intermediate stage of individualized bourgeois property”. In 1877, in reply to an attack in a Russia journal, Marx confined himself to a doubtful admission that Russia had “the finest chance which history ever presented to a nation of avoiding the up-and-downs of the capitalist order”. In 1881 Marx gave a more positive response to a direct personal inquiry from Vera Zasulich; and in the following year the last and most authoritative pronouncement appeared in the preface to a Russian translation of the ‘Communist Manifesto, signed jointly by both its authors: ‘If the Russian revolution is the signal for a workers’ revolution in the west so that these complement each other, then the contemporary Russian system of communal ownership can serve as the starting-point for a Communist development'” [E.H. Carr, Studies in Revolution, 1964]