The people overthrew the Tsar and had one free election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election,_1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wik

The people overthrew the Tsar and had one free election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election,_1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Constituent_Assembly_e... The authoritarians (bolsheviks) didn't like the results (thought the people weren't conscious enough yet to be trusted to be democratic) and disbanded the democratic assembly. Instead they used their own assembly made of up representatives indirectly elected via small local groups where they controlled the voting by force. Which caused a civil war in which the authoritarians won. The authoritarians were just more organized and better at violence.