Below is an extract from “In Search of the Miraculous” by P.D. Ouspensky (1878-1947), a brilliant Russian philosopher, mathemetician, and later esotericist. The setting is Russia, on the cusp of history, at a moment when World War I was just winding down and the Russian Revolution of 1917 was on the approach. Reading his observations of the forces grinding on unstoppably around him, as an Empire stumbled towards suicidal catastrophe, gives a rare insight into the workings of history at those times at which later generations can only look on and wonder, what could possibly have gone so terribly and irreversably wrong?

It seems for some people history always happens in their blindspot.

p.316-317:

By this time, that is, by November, 1916, the position of affairs in Russia had begun to assume a very gloomy aspect. Up to this time we, at any rate most of us, had by some miracle kept clear of “events”. Now “events” were drawing nearer to us, that is to say, they were drawing nearer to each of us personally, and we could no longer fail to notice them.

..

In the first place it was clear to everyone who was able and who wanted to see it that the war was coming to an end and that it was coming to an end by itself through some deep inner weariness and from the realisation, though dull and obscure yet firmly rooted, of the senselessness of all this horror. No one believed now in words of any kind. No attempts of any kind to galvanyze the war were able to lead to anything. At the same time it was impossible to stop anything and all talk about the necessity of stopping the war merely showed the helplessness of the human mind which was even incapable of realising its own helplessness. In the second place it was clear that the crash was approaching. And it was clear that nobody could stop anything nor could they avert events or direct them into some safe channel. Everything was going in the only way it could go and it could go in no other way. I was particularly struck at this time by the position of professional politicians of the left who, up to this time, had played a passive role but were now preparing to pass into an active one. To be precise they showed themselves to be the blindest, the most unprepared, and the most incapable of understanding what they were really doing, where they were going to, what they were preparing, even for themselves.

I remember Petersburg so well during the last winter of its life. Who could have known then, even assuming the very worst, that this was its last winter? But too many people hated this city and too many feared it and its last days were numbered.

p. 327-328 (Feb 1917):

Meanwhile the atmosphere was growing gloomier. One felt that something was bound to happen and that very soon. Only those upon whom the course of events still appeared to depend were unable to see and feel this. The marionettes failed to understand the danger that threatened them and did not understand that the very same wire which pulls the villain with a knife in his hand from behind a bush makes them turn and look at the moon. A marionette theater is worked in the same way.

Finally the storm broke. The “great bloodless revolution” took place – the most absurd and the most blatant lie that could have been thought of. But the most extraordinary thing of all was that people who were there on the spot, in the center of everything that was happening, could believe in this lie, and in the midst of all the murders could speak about a “bloodless” revolution.

I remember that we spoke at the time of the “power of theories”. People who had been waiting for the revolution, who had put all their hopes in it, and who had seen in it liberation from something, could not and did not want to see what was actually happening and only saw what in their opinion ought to be happening.

When I read in a leaflet printed on one side only the news of the abdication of Nockolas II, I felt that in this lay the center of gravity of everything that took place.
..

But after all, the matter had nothing to do with him as a person but with the principle of the unity of power and the responsibility to this power which he represented in himself. It is true that this principle was denied by a considerable part of the Russian intelligentsia. And for the people the word “czar” had long lost its significance. But this word still had a very great significance for the army and for the bureaucratic machine which, though very imperfect, nevertheless worked and held everything together. The “czar” was the indespensable central part of this machine. The abdication of the “czar” at such a moment was bound to destroy the whole machine. And we had nothing else. The celebrated “public-co-operation”, for the creation of which so many sacrifices had been made, proved, as was to be expected, to be bluff. To create anything “on the move” was impossible. Events were moving at a breathless speed. The army broke up in a few days. The war in reality had stopped earlier. But the new government did not wish to recognise this fact. A fresh lie was started. But what was most surprising in all this was that people should find something to be glad about. I do not speak of the soldiers who broke out of barracks or out of the trains which were ready to carry them to the slaughter. But I was surprised at our “intelligentsia” who from “patriots” immediately became “revolutionaries” and “socialists”. Even the Novoe Vremya suddenly became a socialist paper. The famous Menshikov wrote one article “about freedom”, but he evidently could not swallow it himself and gave it up.