This was prior to Lenin's "April Theses" of 1917. The idea that Russia could survive as a bourgeois democratic state was relegated to the Mensheviks. The point was that Russia would have been left behind economically by the capitalists because it was so large. If it was a small, developed country in northern or western Europe, well, that would have been another story. Full bourgeois capitalism would have relegated Russia immediately to the third world. The events since 1990 have borne this out almost a century later.
In the "April Theses," Lenin characterized Russia as, among other things, "state capitalist" because he understood that Russia could not develop to true socialism without the aid of socialist revolution in other countries, especially the developed ones. Stalin, of course, overturned the concept of permanent revolution as "Trotskyist" and instead promoted the revisionist notion of "socialism in one country."
Best, David -----
Russia's not quite third world (itr's not first world either, of course). Last year, Russia came in sometimes like 15th place in terms of industrial production. Russia is a developed industrial country.
Chris Doss
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