Quote:
Originally Posted by TLAM Strike
For 8 months in 1917 there was a coalition government in Russia under Alexander Kerensky that included both groups that would becomes known as the Reds and Whites, and began democratic reforms. This fell however when elections that were scheduled were not held.
This was perhaps of the seed of the real Russian that we all lost.
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Not really quite so simple, but yeah, the failure of the transitional government is a major historical moment. The Bolsheviks were not, by the way, part of that government, so it's not quite accurate to say that it included both Reds and Whites - it did, broadly, include liberals, moderates and some socialists. They were, on all accounts, well-intentioned but couldn't come to any sort of agreement. The elections fell through not because the Directorate didn't want them, but because noone could push through a definite plan. There were simply no effective, visionary politicians among them.
In fact the Bolshevik success in the revolution is one of history's greatest coups by the underdog - or greatest flukes. Contrary to how Soviet propaganda portrayed them, they were almost irrelevant up to that point. Ironically, that worked in their favour. Laying the ground for the revolution, the aborted 1905 revolution, the years of radicalism/terrorism and political activity, the overthrow of the Tsar - the Bolsheviks had almost nothing to do with any of that. They were underestimated by the authorities and little of the reprisals, arrests, scrutiny and persecution against radicals in Russia was directed at them. The Bolsheviks were simply not taken all that seriously or thought of as a threat - and certainly next to wealthy liberals, widespread social revolutionaries, leftist and anarchist radicals who were shooting and bombing authorities at every opportunity, they looked weak and tame. They were not the most important, nor largest, nor best funded, nor the most Socialist, nor the most radical or the most idealistic. Lenin and Trotsky were certainly ideologues to some extent, but objectively speaking they were hardly 'true' Marxists - they bent socialist ideology as they saw fit. Cricially, the Bolsheviks were ruthless, efficient organizers that were able to covertly build up a network of cells throughout the army and among worker organizations just as the Tsarist regime was collapsing/had collapsed. They had a small but exceptionally well-run propaganda machine. And then a weak, ineffectual transitional government of the Directorate put all the cards in the Bolsheviks hands without even realizing it. What follows is an ingenious move by Lenin's and Trotsky's (or maybe they should be in the other order) lean, efficient organization that, by design or fluke, played all those cards right. The rest is history.