THEORY OF HISTORICAL EXPEDIENCY 35 in the nature of a compromise of two contrasting positions. Significantly the possibility of a revolution in Russia first was clearly emphasised by both. To put the revolutionary theory and practice of Bolshevism into proper perspective, one has to say that Marx provided the general theory of revolutionary transformation, Chernyshevskii gave the world its historic-specific requirement and showed its possibilities as a particular theory of transformation and finally Lenin translated these into reality and created a new theory of revolutionary praxis. Therefore Marxism in its application whether in Russia and later elsewhere has to be understood in this context if creative elements have to be identified. It is not an accident that after the November Revolution, in the absence of a successful revolution in the West, there was an intervention of 14 capitalist powers to crush the first sociallist state. Only a Herculean effort of the revolutionary masses of Russia could thwart this gigantic onslaught. Perhaps a revolution in the West as Marx and Engels predicted could have prevented this. In the course of time the importance of a particular institution like the commune lost its existential significance and it remained only a symbol. The general theory of historical expediency, if experience is any guide, transcended the particularities of a specific historical condition that gave rise to this theory. Each country in its strategy and tactics of revolution started with the necessity and inevitability of expediency as an objective requirement. Herein lies the crucial significance of Marx-Chernyshevskii paradigm of social transformation of the last seven decades. 1 MM Rozenthal, Filosofskie vzgliady N G Chernyshevskogo, (Philosophical views of N G Chernyshevskii), Moscow, 1948, p 112. 2 N G Chernyshevekii, "Kritika filosofskikh predubezhdenii protiy obshchin-nogo vladeniya" (A critique of the philosophical prejudices againsi communal land ownership), Pol sob soch, Moscow, Vol 5, 1950, p391. 3 Ibid, p 377 ff. 4 Ibid, p 378. 5 Ibid, p 384. 6 Ibid, p 395. 7 Ibid, p 386. 8 Ibid, p 390. 9 "0 pozemel *noi sobstvennosti" (Concerning Landed Property), J^ol sob soch, Vol 7,p 35. 10 Marx-Engels Werke (Marx-Engels collected works in German), Berlin, Vol 35, pp iv-v. 11 Capital, Moscow. 1974, Vol I. p 715. 12 Ibid. 13 Quentin Lauer, "The Marxist Conception of Science*', in R S Cohen and M W Wartofsky (ed). Methodological and Historical Essays in the Natural and Social Sciences, Boston, 1974, p 318.