[lostlogin]

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/books/review/lenin-on-the...

[KirbyTetro]

Had that been so they would not have fallen.

Nicholas II was a weak leader and a ruthless Soviet style crackdown on the Communist insurrectionists could have saved the Czar.

[lostlogin]

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.

[TeeMassive]

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.