theory

zhenli真理 comments on this:

Marx did not believe that revolutions could not happen in poor countries, this is a myth. Marx outright defended the notion that Russia could have a communist revolution and pushed back against those who disagreed. The idea that history has to unfold in a very specific order is a reductionist understanding of Marxism which Marx himself did not subscribe to.

This reductionist view of Marx views his class analysis as fully predictive, capable of explaining and predicting absolutely everything, and all history must follow a very specific path. Marx disagreed with this, pointing out that in feudal society you had multiple subordinated classes, and so it wasn't certain whether or not it would necessarily develop into capitalism or not, because the peasantry could, under the right historical conditions, also be a revolutionary class. He referred to the peasantry as having a "dual character" which could either be eliminated to make way for the bourgeoisie, or eliminate the bourgeoisie to make way for a society based on peasant communes, and that you couldn't predict this for certain from the classes alone as it would depend on other external factors, on the "historical context."

[D]oes this mean that the development of the ‘agricultural commune’ must follow this route in every circumstance [in every historical context]? Not at all. Its constitutive form allows of the following alternative: either the element of private property which it implies gains the upper hand over the collective element, or the reverse takes place. Everything depends upon the historical context in which it is situated.... Both solutions are a priori possibilities, but each one naturally requires a completely different historical context.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/draft-1.htm

This notion is even reiterated in the Manifesto, so I'm not sure why everyone misses it. Marx and Engels even there speculated that the Russian revolution could possibly be a communist one if somehow the peasantry could get an upper hand over the rising bourgeoisie.

[I]n Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West? The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1882