Understanding the timing and outcome of the Russian Revolution: a public choice approach

Abstract

The October Revolution in Russia is better understood in light of Gordon Tullock’s by-product theory of revolution. This approach entails a focus on private costs and benefits rather than on public goods. It is shown that in terms of economic development, fiscal stability, and income distribution, that is, public goods, conditions in late-tsarist Russia were improving, not deteriorating, as the revolution approached. We reinterpret the impact of the many political concessions that followed the earlier Russian Revolution of 1905 and conclude that they had ultimately increased, rather than decreased, the probability of revolution. Finally, we show that various forms of foreign intervention (financial, military, and philosophical) made the unlikely Lenin the ultimate victor in the outcome of the Russian Revolution.