Thread to talk about tidbits I found interesting

It’s very hard to succinctly articulate the arrogance of the noble class particularly close to the revolution. 

The closest thing I can get is that Queen Victoria wrote her granddaughter (the Tsarina) and she responded like the people didn’t matter

The arrogance may have been warranted if the nobles were truly to smartest people but they weren't! By WW1, most of the ranking officers were just bourgeois nobles who didn't earn their titles

They just followed the bureaucratic path set by the table of ranks and boom your were a general

The nobles refused to adapt to capitalism as well creating rifts between nobles with "old power" and the new merchant close with monetary power

The Cherry Orchard by Chekov is a great example of this theme

I didn't realize the emancipation of the serfs was partially a way for nobles to hand off debt to poor peasants

With most nobles loaded up on debt, they offered emancipation and land grants but required the peasants to take on the debts that the nobles incurred. Thereby reducing their burden and exchanging serfdom for indentured servitude

After emancipation, in the 1870s, the young visionaries went to the countryside in hopes of spreading the good word of revolution under the banner of Bakunin and others 

Its amazing how spontaneous and decentralized of an affair it was but it failed miserably. 

The Wikipedia is great

After emancipation, in the 1870s, the young visionaries went to the countryside in hopes of spreading the good word of revolution under the banner of Bakunin and others 

Its amazing how spontaneous and decentralized of an affair it was but it failed miserably. 

The Wikipedia is great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_to_the_People

It's easy to see especially why young women were so keen to join revolutionary circles based on the peasant cultural tradition. Intensely patriarchal, they had some intense sayings such as:

"The more you beat the old woman, the tastier the soup will be"

"A wife is nice twice: when she's brought into the house as a bride and when she's carried out of it to her grave"

There was little to no value for lost life starting from 1905 onward. Murders and other violent crimes occurred more frequently and weren't look at as "bad". 

This lack of care for life led to brutal torture as all groups / mobs engaged in it. There was a certain pleasure in the terror of it all

It seems dictatorship was a feature, not a bug by early 1918, of the Bolshevik party that Lenin created. For someone so smart, he oddly under prepared for his eventual transition from power, giving us Stalin

The revolution itself is oddly confusing. There were so many political groups vying for power and in the case of the left, infinitely subdivided into multiple sets of parties

Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs and the Kadets were the only once that lasted but even then, they had cliques and small groups with particular views

But starting in 1905, more violence was taking place in the country side against the nobles / gentry. Slaughtering families, taking land, killing animals, etc. 

Large mobs of disenchanted men looking to cause trouble

There is a certain level of anarchy that is hard to relate to today. When the October Revolution occurred, bringing the Bolsheviks to power, no one really cared. Everyone went on with their days outside of central St. Petersberg 

The closest thing I can think of is this video of people cycling during the war in Ukraine

There is a certain level of anarchy that is hard to relate to today. When the October Revolution occurred, bringing the Bolsheviks to power, no one really cared. Everyone went on with their days outside of central St. Petersberg 

The closest thing I can think of is this video of people cycling during the war in Ukraine https://x.com/adamcurtisbroll/status/1805633291900404104

Effectively, a coup was launched and no one cared?? The amount of apathy towards the provisional government would have to be astronomical for something like that to happen 

In America today, the closest thing we may have is January 6th. But everyone cared about that, not a soul just "kept moving forward"

Also Lenin was one hell of an individual in leading the October revolution but he is morally ambiguous at best. He directly endorsed terrible violence towards others and miscalculated volatility after the revolution, leading to more unnecessary deaths

The Go to the People movement ethos really captured 2 groups, the Slavophilia of people like Dostoevsky and the revolutionaries / Marxists / socialists looking for a better future