To understand a historic event means to represent it as the consequence of a definite historic cause or historic causes; in other words, to represent it not as an "accidental" entity caused by nothing, but as an entity inevitably flowing from the total of given conditions. The element of causality is the element of necessity ("causal necessity"). Marxism teaches us that the historic process, and consequently every link in the chain of historic events, is a "necessary" entity. To deduce political fatalism from this doctrine is absurd, for the simple reason that historic events are taking place not outside of but through the will of people, through the class struggle if we deal with a class society. The will of the classes is in every instance determined by given circumstances; in this respect it is not at all "free." However, that will becomes in turn a conditioning factor of the historic process. If we eliminate the actions of people, the struggle of classes, etc., we eliminate the entire historic process
N.I. Bukharin
