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Entry 207 of 240War

The Russian Revolution

1917 CE/Eastern Europe/Russian Empire
Today Russia (Petrograd, modern St. Petersburg)Span Russian Revolution · 1917

Battered by the slaughter of the First World War, mass hunger, and a discredited monarchy, Russia erupted — and in the chaos the Bolsheviks, a small, disciplined faction led by Lenin, seized power and built the world's first communist state. What began as a revolution of workers and soldiers hardened, under Stalin, into one of history's most total dictatorships. It is the revolutionary pattern's most common and bitter ending: hardship and an opening producing not freedom, but a new and harsher elite.

◆ Worth knowingThe Bolsheviks were a tiny minority — their name literally means 'the majority,' a propaganda label they gave themselves after narrowly winning a single party vote and never let go.
◆ The mechanismRevolution from hardship

Hardship plus a sudden opening (weak state, lost war, fiscal collapse) lets those who bear it overthrow the order — usually installing a new elite.

Also: Strongman from disorder · Ideological movement · Legitimating-narrative collapse

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