How could you describe that part of russian history as anything like a gradual slippery slope? It start with a revolution followed by another more radical revolutions and went one from there. Nothing gradual about it.
The revolution was a reaction to the terrible leaders in Russia. The start wasn’t the revolution. Where do you pick as the beginning? I’m not sure, but the revolution was a reaction.
You need to drop your Communist Manifesto and actually read what has been really going on in Russia at the time.
Lenin and his cronies were revolutionaries well before the calamities of the Great War. The leaders of Russian revolutions were were mostly upper middle class intellectuals and were radicalized in relatively comfortable social circumstances at universities and in various intellectual circles. Lenin often bragged that he actively pushed people against one another so he could harness more revolutionary momentum, which led to even more calamities. And that's not even mentioning that he was implanted as an ideological virus to destroy the Russian Empire by the German agents.
The revolution wasn't some romantic reaction lead by the proletariat against the oppressor. It was led by power hungry fanatics who manipulated the people's grievances to remove those who were in their way and then installed themselves into power.
I’m a huge fan of Simon Sebag Montefiore. You couldn’t read his Russian histories and find much to like in any of Russia’s leaders.
The system overthrown by the revolution was brutal, but so were the revolutionaries. Where do you think they learned their policing tactics and techniques?
In terms of Lenin being a weapon, one of the greatest quotes on this is Churchill’s. Germany “turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia”
It’s a quote from a book that’s well worth a read if you haven’t already, ‘Lenin on the Train’ by Catherine Merridale.
Stolypin might have had some good ideas (eg have peasants own land), but mass executions of protesters and the use of terrorism against workers are not the actions of benevolent leaders. There were mass crackdowns.
The Lena goldfields massacre is an example of this.
The repeated combination of Nicholas II’s inaction/absense followed by a cack-handed crackdown was the ultimate fuel to the fire.
All of which had equivalents in other places and usually led to better reforms or suppression that are still bad but not as bad both in scale and violence than what the communists did.
That is all true, as far as I know, but then the question is why did they succeed, if not by exploiting widespread discontent in the general population?
Indeed, but widespread discontent seems to be an important risk factor for that outcome, isn’t it?
My understanding of history is limited, but this I know; History is always messy, and you can never identify just one single reason for the way things turned out.
The US hasn't seen total war, famine and disease yet the Marxists are openly pushing people against one another to ferment a revolution. Again we see the same pattern of upper middle class intellectuals radicalized in universities openly opposing incremental reforms in favor of violent uprisings. Just saying "History is messy" is intellectual laziness, the patterns are clear and happened many times before.
There doesn't need to be a good side in a battle. The communists were evil. The czars were... at least, extremely incompetent; and their screw-ups also cost lives... at the end, including their own.
To simplify it a lot, for the last two or three centuries before the communist revolution, the czars couldn't make up their mind about what type of country they wanted to have, so they kept radically changing policies every generation. On one hand, they wanted absolute tyranny, Asia-style. On the other hand, they wanted material progress just like in the West. So, one day they opened many schools, allowed independent press, hoping that this will bring progress and wealth. Then, ten or twenty years later, they panicked, seeing that there was too much independent thought and heresy, so they closed all those schools and put all journalists in prison. Then again, ten or twenty years later, they decided they needed some progress and prosperity, so they opened the schools and allowed the press again... then banned everything again... then allowed everything again... then banned again... and so on, for centuries. If you keep giving people freedoms and then taking them away, they will be pissed off way more than someone who was consistently oppressed for generations. The pre-communist Russia had tons of potential revolutionaries, and strong oppressive secret police to keep control over everything.
The last czar deserves a Darwin award, because he was repeatedly warned about the danger of communists and asked for permission to crush them mercilessly (that is, to apply more than just the usual routine persecution of everyone), but instead he fired the boss of the secret police, accusing him of wasting resources on trivialities and ignoring the real danger -- the Jews. (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were published in Russia in 1903.)
Then, WW1 happened, and communists got the extremely intelligent and ruthless leader Lenin, who promised everyone whatever they wanted, made alliances, broke all promises, kept stabbing all his former allies in the back as he was making new allies, until he got to the top. Then he established his own version of secret police which, after many rebrandings, still remains one of the pillars of Russia, surviving even the fall of communism. And yes, it is a "coincidence" that many celebrities of the revolution were also upper middle class intellectuals of the previous regime. (Except for Stalin, I think.)
And in some sense this yes-then-no-then-yes-then-no style of government persisted during communism and later, as if it's inextricably a part of Russian politics no matter the regime. Peasants were considered the enemies of progress, then the driving force of progress; capitalism was evil, then good, then evil, then good, then evil again; etc.
As the French saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.