Tsarist Russia, bastion of democracy
:lenin-sure:
It was bound to be overthrown by rightists and we’d see Russia turn into a somehow even more repressive version of the empire.
It wouldn’t even need to be overthrown by the right: they were already in power. The Mensheviks were actively collaborating with and elevating the Cadets while using reactionary forces to attack the left in the streets. There were a long list of grievances that led the congress of soviets to vote for revolution, but the active and impending reactionary violence from the Provisional Government were the key points that brought the representatives over to the side of the Bolsheviks (along with Bolsheviks just being more popular among the locally-elected Soviets than any other faction). At least that’s how Jack Reed recounts it in 10 Days that Shook the World.
I’d wager the argument is more “because of the rise of the USSR, the rest of the world became too anti-communist for socdems (the real communists) to come into power”. Which is also stupid, but whatever.
Its not stupid. The Western Red Scare was very real.
But blaming Lenin for being the first guy to successfully implement a Communist state and sparking an intentional panic is like blaming Yuri Gagarin for the Challenger Disaster.
Foreigners succeeding are not the proximate cause of Westerners failing.
