This is just my opinion and i’m sure there’s a more scientific answer but i’d say it has a lot to do with imperialism. Germany and Italy were historically among the main imperialist powers and as such had both a population with a mentality shaped by imperialism/colonialism as well as the material preconditions that made them more prone to fascist takeover rather than socialist revolution. Russia, though it sounds paradoxical, was an empire in name but not a highly developed imperialist power in the way the western Europeans were.
Russia was very underdeveloped and its capitalist system was not yet fully established (having just emerged out of semi-feudal conditions), such that its capitalist class was too weak to be able to take undisputed control when the monarchy fell. In addition its population was not as accustomed as that of Western Europe to living in (comparative) luxury on the basis of colonial wealth extraction. Their population was still mainly peasant class and did not yet have a developed imperial core mentality of entitlement and superiority over other peoples.
On the other end of the scale you have Britain and France where you also didn’t see the kinds of fascist coups you saw in Germany and Italy. And this is to do with the fact that, certainly after the First World War, these were merely second tier imperialist powers, while Britain and France were the main colonial powers and were able to extract so much colonial plunder that their capitalist class did not consider open fascism necessary. They could still afford to bribe their population and maintain absolute control as well as high profits under a liberal-bourgeois “democratic” model.
In short it was not necessary to institute open fascist dictatorship in Britain and France because the dominance of the capitalist class there was absolute, their populations too docile on account of the benefits of living in the core of the two largest colonial empires in the world and so posed little to no threat of socialist revolution. Bourgeois “democracy” is the preferred system for capital under conditions of abundant super-profits and a politically neutered working class. Open fascism is sort of a last resort as it creates too much instability and opposition.
And this model has worked for a long time now in Europe and the Anglo colonial nations as they managed after the Second World War, through a mixture of material benefits and cultural indoctrination, to turn their populations into highly docile and servile cultures that had almost no thought of rebellion or uprising. This is now slowly changing as the material conditions for that are going away but the culture of capitalist bootlicking is still very much entrenched. That coupled with the pervasive racism and convictions of cultural superiority means that we are now again entering ideal conditions for fascism.
This is just my opinion and i’m sure there’s a more scientific answer but i’d say it has a lot to do with imperialism. Germany and Italy were historically among the main imperialist powers and as such had both a population with a mentality shaped by imperialism/colonialism as well as the material preconditions that made them more prone to fascist takeover rather than socialist revolution. Russia, though it sounds paradoxical, was an empire in name but not a highly developed imperialist power in the way the western Europeans were.
Russia was very underdeveloped and its capitalist system was not yet fully established (having just emerged out of semi-feudal conditions), such that its capitalist class was too weak to be able to take undisputed control when the monarchy fell. In addition its population was not as accustomed as that of Western Europe to living in (comparative) luxury on the basis of colonial wealth extraction. Their population was still mainly peasant class and did not yet have a developed imperial core mentality of entitlement and superiority over other peoples.
On the other end of the scale you have Britain and France where you also didn’t see the kinds of fascist coups you saw in Germany and Italy. And this is to do with the fact that, certainly after the First World War, these were merely second tier imperialist powers, while Britain and France were the main colonial powers and were able to extract so much colonial plunder that their capitalist class did not consider open fascism necessary. They could still afford to bribe their population and maintain absolute control as well as high profits under a liberal-bourgeois “democratic” model.
In short it was not necessary to institute open fascist dictatorship in Britain and France because the dominance of the capitalist class there was absolute, their populations too docile on account of the benefits of living in the core of the two largest colonial empires in the world and so posed little to no threat of socialist revolution. Bourgeois “democracy” is the preferred system for capital under conditions of abundant super-profits and a politically neutered working class. Open fascism is sort of a last resort as it creates too much instability and opposition.
And this model has worked for a long time now in Europe and the Anglo colonial nations as they managed after the Second World War, through a mixture of material benefits and cultural indoctrination, to turn their populations into highly docile and servile cultures that had almost no thought of rebellion or uprising. This is now slowly changing as the material conditions for that are going away but the culture of capitalist bootlicking is still very much entrenched. That coupled with the pervasive racism and convictions of cultural superiority means that we are now again entering ideal conditions for fascism.