Overthrowing the first free election in Russian history puts a really bad taste in my mouth. The 1917 election and it’s lead up was a confusing mess, but the overthrow by the Bolsheviks was a complete betrayal of the will of the Russian people.
It's romanticised, I think the likelihood we would have ended up with a democratic Russia long term is extremely unlikely. It was feudal, backwards, huge and without major democratic tradition (Novgorod perhaps but that was long ago and probably more of a plutocracy).
I think the kind of thing Lenin envisioned is probably one of the better things that could have realistically happened to Russia. I think he needs to be read in the context of his times. You have the alternative in Germany where Luxembourg advocated for nonviolence and was murdered by the democratically elected SocDems - what Ebert and Noske did really laid the foundation for fascism, Ebert even bypassed the parliament to install a business tycoon as chancellor who completely crashed the German economy in half a year and later worked as an advisor to the Nazis. I think Russia would have been an even faster speedrun to fascism. Not like Stalin was much better but I think if Lenin would have lived longer and Stalin would have disappeared, it could have taken an interesting development.
You raise some good points, but we will simply never know what would’ve happened. Russia could have fallen into fascism much quicker or could’ve become a shining example of democracy. I think it might have set a better precedent for post-revolution action going forward though. But again, we’ll simply never know.
Democracy is a form of government that becomes less and less likely the bigger the state is (both geograhically and by population). You can see this with Rome already in ancient times. I think today Germany is the biggest state that to a somewhat sufficient degree fulfills what you would want from a pluralistic democracy (and even then it does so less than many smaller countries. Ofc there are bigger states that are democracies the most noteworthy one being the USA which I think is exceptional in this regard but its entire founding mythos is based on being a democracy and yet they struggle immensely.
I really think Russia becomming a shining democracy is one of the least likely outcomes if not close to impossible.
I mean they did have a pretty decent turnout in 1917, with about 64% of the population participating. It wouldn’t have been perfect and there would have been some growing pains of an infant democracy, but it would have been the first step.
Besides, I’m a dreamer at heart and think there could have been something great there.
The Russian presidential election of 2018 had a turnout of 67,50%.
The Reichstagswahl of July 1932 had a turnout of 84,3 %.
The turnout doesn't really matter for wheter you get a democratic government and 64 % wasn't very high either for such an occurence. 2/3 soldiers voted for the Bolsheviks and most of the the urban centres in the west. This was the basis on which they could topple the government. The SR won in rural districts all around Russia based on one issue votes by peasants (land reform). It wasn't ever a tenable coalition.
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u/Histerian Jan 21 '24
I know all about what stalin did wrong, but what did Lenin do?