Understanding the timing and outcome of the Russian Revolution: a public choice approach
Journal: Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice
Year: 2023

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 e