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This article over-analyzes the situation and gives Lenin and co too much credit. What happened was very simple: * Russia is in the midst of World War I and thi
by gtrubetskoy 9y ago
This article over-analyzes the situation and gives Lenin and co too much credit. What happened was very simple:
* Russia is in the midst of World War I and things are rather rough for people.
* Leftist/liberals use the situation to their advantage and pressure Nicholas into resigning in Feb/Mar 1917 ending the monarchy and instituting the "provisional govenment" which was rather weak and inexperienced. They do dumb things like pardon all prisoners.
* Germany takes advantage of the weakness and sends in Lenin to sabotage the weak government.
* In Oct 1917 this armed gang of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin takes over. Having realized how relatively easy it was, they ensure that they stay in power by publicly executing anyone who even hints at descent.
* 28 years later in 1945, Germany surrenders to Stalin, one of the very people it paid to topple Russia.
Edit: The lesson is rather simple: any however well-intentioned revolution is most often followed by a coup whereby ruthless criminals take over and in the end everyone suffers. The liberal parties who pushed for a constitutional monarchy and democracy inadvertently caused over 100 million deaths and a century of misery for their country and the world.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago> 28 years later in 1945, Germany surrenders to Stalin, one of the very people it paid to topple Russia. True, although it wasn't the same crew running Germany - the Kaiser was long gone.
- golergka 9y agoPainting Lenin only as a German spy is an oversimplification. He had his own agenda long before his dealings with the Germans, and he succeeded with it, in the end.
- hutzlibu 9y agoYour comment could become a cited example of oversimplification ... Seriously, history is maybe a bit more complex. And that's a understatement ...
- hamilyon2 9y agoOr maybe you cannot explain what happened on half of continent for 28 years with 5 sentences and state it was simple. Has Lenin been armed gangster, he wouldn't written a lot of books. Putin is less educated than was Lenin. World can't come in terms with what was happening in russia it late 19-th and 20-th century. This is a shame, because we can learn a valuable lesson from those events.
- watwut 9y agoArmed gangster is not mutually exclusive with writing things. And murdering megalomaniac is not mutually exclusive with education.
- thriftwy 9y agoYou can't explain away 100 million victims if you tried.
- DubiousPusher 9y agoHe was certainly more than a gangster but he seems to have been a horrible person. He lived an acetic lifestyle and pushed that disdain of pleasure into the party orthodoxy. He used his allies for advantage in a way that went way beyond the political norm of the time. And he laid the groundwork for the Soviet Gulag system. An apparatus that inflicted the equivalent of half a dozen holocaust's worth of human suffering over its existence.
- DubiousPusher 9y agoI'm pretty sure they only pardoned all political prisoners. Which was essentially required under their new constitution because it guaranteed the freedom of speech. The February revolution was not triggered by "Leftists". It was a popular uprising. Which, if the Tsar hadn't been a bullheaded autocrat, he could've headed off by instuting fairly moderate reforms and sharing power with the beaurocracy and the parliament.