Roman Rosdolsky
The Role of Accidents and "Great People" in History
The article by Roman Rosdoisky written in 1965 and published posthumously in German Trotskist journal Kritik, offers an analysis of Marxist understanding of the role of accident and "great people" in history. The authors challenges the views of Edward Carr and Isaac Deutscher and argues that Marxism can offer solutions to the problems which neither the so called voluntarism nor mechanical determinism are capable of solving. He does not lift "great people" to the status of demiurges of historical reality, but neither does he reduce their role to that of helpless tools of history.