I'm very ignorant about history, generally. It's only in the last few years I've come to find it interesting.
Anyway, we were staying in this holiday cottage, and there were some books in there, as there often are. These were intended only for decoration, I think. Mostly volumes of an ancient encyclopedia, plus a book called "handbook of Marxism", which I began to read. It was condensed extracts from the writings of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, etc.
Reading a particular piece by Lenin, on tactics for overthrow of democracy in the UK, what struck me was how biblical it seemed. In the Bible, not that I'm all that familiar, I believe there is this tone where, after the resurrection and the ascent of Jesus to heaven, they believe he's going to come again, to rule the world, judge everyone, etc etc, and they think it's going to be pretty soon. Like, he's just popped home to get some things sorted out, but he'll be back in a few weeks. Certainly within their lifetimes. (Someone tell me if I'm all wrong about this).
Then later, it gets changed to the current view, where this is all going to happen way way in the future, and anyone who talks about the end of the world happening soon is a nutter.
Anyway, the Marxist thing seemed just the same. The revolution had happened in Russia, and Lenin was writing about how it would happen everywhere. And because of conditions in Russia, it had taken 15 years there, but it would be much faster in (for example) England. They expected it to be happening almost at once. Whereas, I think now, the standard Marxist view is that it's inevitable and guaranteed, but may be after a very long time, maybe not in our lifetimes, and we all need to work towards it.
