In January of 1917, V.I. Lenin was disappointed. He was living in exile in Zurich, having failed to bring about a communist revolution in Russia in the wake of the Russian revolution of 1905. Yet, being a committed revolutionary, he refused to declare defeat. In a speech to socialists on January 22, Lenin described the failure to win a decisive battle against the Russian regime as a “temporary defeat.” Nonetheless, he did not know when a similar opportunity might arise and he told his audience:
We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution. But I can, I believe, express the confident hope that the youth which is working so splendidly in the socialist movement of Switzerland, and of the whole world, will be fortunate enough not only to fight, but also to win, in the coming proletarian revolution.
Lenin did not know then, of course, that in a just a few months he would be returning to Russia, and there he would seize upon new political realities that would allow him and his followers to smash the provisional government and put his own people in key positions enabling a takeover of the Russian state.
Mere months after calling on younger socialists to carry on in the wake of failure, Lenin was taking advantage of what has come to be known as “political opportunity”—when changes in political institutions, coupled with evolution in ideology, combine to create fertile ground for significant changes in regimes and their political institutions.
In more colloquial terms, we could say that “the time was ripe” for an anti-capitalist revolution in Russia. And this is what made it possible for Lenin, or someone like him, to carry out a coup d’etat.
The phrase “political opportunity” was developed decades ago to describe the phenomenon that successful revolutionaries, reformers, and activists have long understood: that significant changes in political institutions come out of a mixture of ideology and historical conditions. Political events are not determined only by the battle of ideas, but also by ideological and political movements being present in the right place at the right time.
It’s not enough for an ideology to have a “good argument.” Historical conditions must also provide three key factors: the status quo political institutions must be weakened by some factor such as an inability to deliver what the population expects and demands. Secondly, the population must be open to new institutions as a result of a perceived failure of old institutions. Finally, the winning ideology must have had enough success to at least be a known option in the period leading up to the weakening and delegitimization of the status quo.
Without these factors, it is extraordinarily difficult for a group of revolutionaries or radicals to successfully present to the population new ideological choices, and to thus effect significant changes in political institutions
The Russian Case
The case of the 1917 Russian revolution provides a useful example on how this process works. By 1917, the Russian monarchy had weakened to the point that it collapsed and was replaced by the Russian Provisional Government in March of that year. A key factor in the destruction of the tsarist government had been the First World War and the Russian loss to the Germans. Although the Germans would ultimately lose the broader war, the Russians lost badly to the Germans. The Russian state would ultimately give up by March 1918, and sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This was disastrous for the tsarist regime.
Yet, the collapse of the tsarist state did not make non-state institutions robust. The state still dominated life in Russia, which facilitated the eventual success of the Bolsheviks. Moreover, the Western ideology of liberalism was especially weak in Russia. Historian Ralph Raico explains this convergence of factors:
In Russia, civil society was weak ... and the state was strong. Russia proved to be fertile ground for the spread of socialist ideas very early on. Liberal social theory—the ideas of Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Turgot, Madison, and others—never really struck root in Russia. By the time an intelligentsia sprang up in Russia, European intellectuals, from whom the Russians derived most of their political ideas, had made capitalism into an object of horror. The chaos following the fall of its tsar and the demoralization caused by the First World War permitted Lenin and his highly disciplined, ideologically driven Bolsheviks to effect their coup d’état.1
Raico notes, by the way, that ideology would prove to be an important factor in the eventual end of the Soviet Union:
Similarly, the collapse of the Soviet regime can only be understood as a case study in the operation of ideology in this sense—of the end of a particular ideology’s sway. The subversion of the Leninist faith began after Stalin’s death. It was the intellectual and cultural thaw introduced by Khrushchev. In the 1960s, a few dissident intellectuals, often “samizdat” publishers—that’s the Russian word that meant the publishers of illegal antiregime writings generally using carbon paper on typewriters—sowed the seeds of doubt in small urban and university circles. That’s what samizdat intellectuals were often reduced to, since they by law and terror had no access to reproduction of writings by other means. Still, the great mass of Soviet citizens remained indoctrinated until the declarations of perestroika and glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev. Those reforms were a big mistake of his—especially glasnost, the open airing of political and other opinions.2
Ideology was a key factor, but in Russia, the timing was largely dictated for the 1917 coup by war-fueled chaos in Russia, and by the lack of a robust and independent private sector—i.e., “civil society.”
Similarly, with the collapse of the USSR nearly eight decades later, anti-regime ideology was building, but political and economic realities had to also change. For example, the disastrous Soviet-Afghan war delegitimized the Soviet state, and the Chernobyl disaster helped to illustrate the malice and incompetence of the regime for all to see. Moreover, the sharp decline in oil prices during the first half of the 1980s placed a growing financial burden on the Russian fiscal situation. It was only when historical conditions sufficiently undermined the state economically, and in terms of perceived legitimacy, that anti-Soviet ideology was able to prevail.
Raico also notes ideology forms in tandem with historical events. For example, by the early twentieth century, Russians had long associated liberalism with the French revolutionary wars and with Napoleon’s conquests in the name of imposing allegedly enlightened liberal ideals. This was important in essentially inoculating Russians—and also Germans, it might be noted—against widespread acceptance of liberalism. Ideological development is not simply a product of philosophical reasoning, but comes out of real world experience and efforts by ideologists to adapt their world views to reflect actual realities on the ground. Moreover, the degree to which an ideology is considered to be “correct” among members of the public will depend at least partially on whether or not the public perceives an ideology as reflective of real-world phenomena. (This is partly why the work of historians is so important in the battle of ideas. People often base their ideological views partly on what they perceive to be historical realities.)
In Lenin’s case, he was going into an ideological milieu in Russia where liberalism had failed to become popular. Thus, a political opportunity opened up for the socialists in Russia while there was no equivalent opportunity in the more liberal-minded societies of western Europe. The work of anti-capitalists among Russian intellectuals played an important role in creating a political opportunity for the socialist revolution.
What Is Political Opportunity?
“Political opportunity” is the idea that political movements are constrained in the options available for effective action in terms of events and institutions external to the political movement. Or, as Ruud Koopmans puts it, political opportunity consists of “options for collective action, with chances and risks attached to them, which depend on factors outside the mobilizing group.”3
In the real world, options are never unlimited, and the available options can be limited by a number of factors exogenous to a political or ideological movement. In many cases, movements can face outright repression in terms of legal prosecution and harassment, and by outright physical force in the form of military or police action. In other cases, costs can be imposed on movements through propaganda strategies. Adherents of one movement or another can be discredited through negative media attention or frequent denunciations by political figures. Or, movements can be labeled “extreme” or unsavory in ways that make potential supporters and members reluctant to associate with the movement. In these cases, the regime and its allies can impose costs on joining political movements in the form of lost career opportunities, diminished income, and social costs. The more legitimacy the state and the media enjoy, the more effectively will they be able to impose these costs.
On the other hand, if the regime and its compliant media organs are in a state of declining power and legitimacy, then new options open up for the political movements that had formerly been labeled as undesirable or “too radical.” And, of course, if state institutions become weakened through fiscal strain or general public resistance, then this lessens the potential costs imposed on radically anti-status-quo movements, as well.
Much of this, however, is beyond the control of the political movement itself. Dissident ideological or political movements—especially minority ones—have little ability to fundamentally change the larger economic context. However, as political and economic trends force the public to question the value of status quo institutions, radical anti-regime movements encounter many more options and opportunities.
For example, the First World War and the decline of the Russian state were factors almost entirely outside the control of Lenin and the socialists. Yet, after decades of building political mobilization, supported by ideological and intellectual movements, Lenin and his followers were in a position to take advantage of the historical events that plagued the status-quo regime in Russia.
The Role of the Battle of Ideas
Perhaps the most prominent scholar who popularized the concept of political opportunity was Charles Tilly, the sociologist and pioneer in the study of the origins and formation of the state. Tilly states that the term “opportunity,” in the context of revolutionary change, “describes the relationship between the population’s interests and the current state of the world around it.”4
Ideology is key in determining how a population’s interests are defined. To some extent, the interests are determined by basic needs such as the need for food and shelter. But interests are usually much broader than this. If a population generally accepts the idea that market freedom is a good thing, the population’s perception of its own interests will be one thing. If a population decides that capitalism is a force for evil in the world, then perceived interests will be quite different.
In other words, ideology shapes political opportunity because ideology partly determines that relationship between “interests” and the “current state of the world.” If an ideology is compatible with the institutional status quo, then the relationship between interests and the larger political context will be a comfortable and easily sustainable one. On the other hand, if an ideology frames the status quo as unjust or evil, then the relationship between the population’s perceived interests and the status quo institutions will be a contentious and unstable one.
All too often, those who focus on mobilization and political action—as opposed to the work of intellectual and ideological movements—greatly overestimate what can be accomplished through political action without first laying the groundwork through ideological work. In this case, movement advocates often ignore the constraints on available options imposed by existing political, ideological, or economic realities. What is necessary is a “window of opportunity” that opens due to changes in historical and institutional change.5
The Leninists benefited from years of prior anti-capitalism endemic in the intellectual environment in Russia. Similarly, any modern movement, seeking to significantly depart from the status quo, will need to build upon prior intellectual and ideological work.
This is the challenge any pro-freedom, anti-state movement faces today. In the United States today—as in most Western regimes—the governing elites are, so far, able to maintain the fiction that the state is a source of relative stability and prosperity. Experience suggests that the US regime continues to be regarded as a source of safety from real or imagined threats to life and limb. Moreover, the regime is widely regarded as a legitimate source of amenities through programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and others. These views are hardly universal, thanks in part to the success of free-market and pro-freedom ideologies. But, pro-regime views certainly dominate the beliefs of a sizable portion of the population. This is unlikely to change rapidly until significant changes occur in the fiscal, monetary, and geopolitical position of the US regime. Similar changes combined to bring down the Soviet Union in early 1990s, and they are likely necessary to bring about a similar delegitimization of the American regime. This is when we will see a sizable shift in political opportunities and options available to movements informed by radical ideologies opposed to the status quo.
- 1
Ralph Raico, The Struggle for Liberty (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2025) p. 166.
- 2
Ibid. p. 167.
- 3
Ruud Koopmans, “Political Opportunity Structure: Some Splitting to Balance the Lumping” in Goodwin, J. and J. Jasper (eds.), Rethinking Social Movements (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) p. 65.
- 4
Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978) p. 55.
- 5
See David S. Meyer and Debra C. Minkoff, “Conceptualizing Political Opportunity,” Social Forces 82, no. 4 (June 2004):1457-1492.
