The RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1917)

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by Morley Evans

The RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1917)

Vladamir Lenin, the fiery orator

The Russian Revolution (1917), as it has been told by everyone, is a myth.

Wikipedia encapsulates a very complicated story this way. "The Russian Revolution took place in 1917, during the final phase of World War I. It removed Russia from the war and brought about the Russian Empire's transformation into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), replacing Russia's traditional monarchy with the world's first Communist state."

Russians did not rise up en mass to rally behind Lenin, the fiery orator and leader of the Bolshevik Party. That is their story. What happened is much more interesting.

Russian society was agrarian. Most Russians had been serfs who were owned by the aristocracy who owned the land. They were the property of the Boyars, who were the highest-ranked aristocrats. Serfs could be bought and sold along with produce and livestock. They could be sent off to war. They were worse off than slaves. In 1861, when the American Civil War broke out, Tsar Alexander II emancipated the serfs in Russia. The Boyars didn't like this, of course, but they still owned the land. The peasantry worked the land and paid rent. These farmers could not be bought and sold.

Tsar Alexander I defeated Napoleon; Nicholas I lost the Crimean War, sold Alaska to the Americans to keep it out of British hands, and abandoned Russian California as unprofitable; Alexander II liberated the serfs and was assassinated; Alexander III was an autocrat who died of nephritis; Nicholas II abdicated and was assassinated, ending the Romanov dynasty and the Russian Empire.

The Great War (1914 to 1918) changed the world. Germany was led by Paul von Hindenberg and his Chief of Staff, Erich Ludendorff, who ran the German military. Germany was squeezed on the Western Front by the French and British. The Americans would join them in 1917. The Germans were squeezed on the Eastern front by Russia. Ludendorff packed up Lenin in Switzerland and transported him by "sealed train" to St. Petersburg (Petrograd). As an avowed enemy of the Russian Empire, Ludendorff hoped Lenin would destroy Russia from within. That's what he did.

Russia was an agrarian country in 1914. People had begun moving to the cities to gain work in newly constructed factories. They were fertile ground for emerging unions and socialists. 

The Russian war effort against the Germans was not going well. Feeding the army and supplying it with ammunition was not always met. Food was rationed in the cities as well. Tsar Nicholas II decided to step up to do his duty. He tried, but he was not helpful. His generals suggested he abdicate in favour of his brother. He agreed. His brother said he wasn't interested in the job. At that point, the Romanov dynasty ended (1613 to 1917), and the Russian Empire ended with it. 

LENIN HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

The Duma was the Russian Parliament. Now, it was in charge. There were dozens of competing socialists in the provisional government. Alexander Kerensky was one of them. Collectively they were the Mensheviks. They believed in gradual progress towards socialism. Lenin believed a violent revolution was essential. Lenin's small group was called the Bolsheviks.  

The Bolsheviks organized a coup d'état seizing power from the other socialists. They established a dictatorship. 

The Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending the war with the German Empire in 1918.

A Civil War erupted between the Reds and the Whites. The Reds, organized by Trotsky, would win in April 1919.

Nicholas II and his family were assassinated in 1918. Nicholas II had abdicated. That makes what happened a tragedy and a murder. Their papers reveal they knew they were in danger, but they had decided they would never leave Russia because they didn't want to leave. They were Russians, after all.

The Bolsheviks were in charge of the cities. The countryside was controlled by the peasants, who took control of food production with ownership of the land. THESE FARMERS WERE CAPITALISTS.

In 1923, Lenin introduced the NEP (New Economic Plan) to keep the cities from starving and communism from collapsing. 

Stalin became the General Secretary after Lenin created the position and appointed Stalin to it in 1923. Lenin died in 1924. Stalin instigated collectivization, which put the farmers back into serfdom (1929-1933). Stalin enslaved millions of free people with collectivization.

Conclusion: The Russian Revolution took from 1917 to 1933 when collectivization was completed. SIXTEEN YEARS. The communists were never swept into power by popular acclaim — that story is a myth. IT IS A LIE. Many Russians fought to prevent the Bolsheviks from taking over: farmers, socialists, monarchists, and capitalists. Poles, Hungarians, Czechoslavakians, even British and Americans fought to prevent Lenin from taking over Russia. Today, for the Nazis in Western Ukraine, the Russian Civil War hasn't ended. The CIA uses them in its on-going war on Russia. The CIA lives in its own time-warp.

Lenin's brainchild was tried from 1917 to 1991 — 74 years. An autopsy must conclude that Marxism-Leninism never worked. Lenin, himself, could not make his own system work. What the USSR accomplished under Stalin was the personal achievement of Stalin himself. These things don't prove the system can work. Stalin's successors couldn't make communism work.

Stephen Kotkin, who has researched Stalin's career extensively to grossly understate what he did, has discovered that while Stalin made all the top decisions, that is not what always happened at the bottom because these orders often were impossible. For example, Soviet industry could not have been moved beyond the Urals after Operation Barbarossa began. From where did all the tanks and planes come in WW II, one wonders. Someone made them somehow somewhere. How the USSR actually worked is a mystery that Professor Kotkin has raised but hasn't answered. Russians did make it work somehow. Physical evidence exists. To be honest, I haven't read the thousands of pages he has written. The answer could be there, of course.

Russians must have improvised to do necessary things to survive despite communism.

A famous person you may have heard of has said that Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.  

Marxism-Leninism has been tried in many countries besides Russia. It has never enjoyed better results. China is succeeding because Deng Xiaoping abandoned communism and built trade with the USA that Mao and Richard Nixon began. The Communist Party of China is firmly in control. That doesn't mean China is a communist country. China is an oligarchic or plutocratic dictatorship like every other country in history. The USA is also an oligarchic/plutocratic dictatorship that pretends it is run by mob rule (ochlocracy).

The American founders wrote a Constitution trying to avoid the problems that human nature brings to human societies. They established a Republic. They didn't like democracy. Some Americans think they can do what the Russians failed to do.  They put themselves in the driver's seat in November 2020 by stealing the election. There is a mountain of evidence proving what they did. You may get to see it someday. Republicans will show it to you. Democrats have done their best to hide it.

After highjacking Russia, Lenin and the communists took Russians on an unpleasant trip, locked in the trunk, for most of the 20th century. Will the Democratic Party now do this to Americans? People suffering from parasitized minds are now in charge.