Dam. I nearly slipped up and didn't post anything!
Well, ladies and gentlemen, November 7th 2019 marks the 102nd Anniversary of the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. We've come a very long way since then; we've had the great depression, the rise of fascism, the second world war, the cold war and the collapse of communism.
Sounds like the last century has been one heck of a rollercoaster ride. A lot of people didn't even think we'd survive. (And even now, who can say?)
Do you believe that the Communist Revolution in Russia was ultimately a good thing or a bad thing for the world?
I think the March Revolution, in which the Tsar was overthrown, was a good thing. The Provisional Government's primary mistake was in trying to please both sides, as well as the Western Allies who were pressuring Russia to remain in the war. After the Bolshevik Revolution in November, the whole country was plunged into civil war, so that was certainly bad.
In some ways, the Revolution was good in that it might have been a wake-up call to other countries to treat their working class better. Western liberals favored social and economic reforms in order to improve the standard of living, partly to avoid the kinds of extreme disparities and misery which existed in Tsarist Russia.
However in the West, many people were gripped by profound fears of communism and the Soviet Union. A lot of governments opposed the Soviet Union from the get go, so they were pretty much isolated from the rest of the world, diplomatically, politically, and economically.
So, there was enmity right from the start, although in those early years, the Soviet Union was hardly in any position to threaten the West.
But the US was afraid of communist infiltrators, anarchists, wobblies, so Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, launched a series of raids against what he saw as enemies of the United States. It would be part of a general wariness and ongoing campaign against communism that gripped our national consciousness for generations.
So from a US point of view, that appears to be the more significant downside of the Communist Revolution, since whole generations were fed heavy doses of propaganda about the "godless communists" and so forth, it seemed to affect our national psyche in numerous ways.
Our fear of Communism in the US did more damage to our country than the Communists ever could have done on their own.
Would we have been better off if it had never happened and what would you have expected to be different?
I've often wondered what would have happened if the Provisional Government under Kerensky had survived. Russia was doing badly in the war, but if they had stayed in and held on for just another year, they would have been on the winning side and would have had an equal seat along with the other Allied Powers at Versailles. No doubt they would have been able to retain the pre-war boundaries of the Russian Empire, and they might have been able to gain even more territory (such as in Turkey - the Bosporus and Dardanelles, possibly).
Kerensky's government was more moderate, although they did have some socialist underpinnings, but it would have been liberal and democratic. They certainly would have had greater cooperation with the West, which would have put them in a much better position to industrialize and modernize. They wouldn't have been isolated enemies of the West, but friends and allies.
But it's doubtful that it would be a smooth sailing all the way, since there were a number of different factions and internal dissension within Russia, not to mention the non-Russian provinces which had active independence movements. Also, presuming they'd be a relatively capitalist country tied in with Western economies, Russia would probably be hit hard by the Great Depression.
My guess is that, if the Communists never came to power, then it's unlikely that Hitler would have come to power. But it's still possible that whoever might lead the German government might still have disputes with Russia - and vice versa. Russia also had ongoing issues on their eastern frontier as well, so that likely would have remained the same no matter which government was in power.
Has the world been better off since the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR dissolved? And what lessons are there from the experience of communism in the 20th century that apply to the present day?
Well, it was good that the Berlin Wall came down. That was a pretty memorable event. I visited the USSR when I was in my early 20s, and even though it was a few years before the collapse, it didn't really appear that way. The country seemed relatively functional to me, even if not luxurious by Western standards. Gorbachev was a relative moderate compared to his predecessors, but I would consider him to be one of history's more tragic characters, similar to Kerensky.
At that time, the original bases and pretexts for the Cold War had pretty much grown irrelevant, especially as it applied to Europe. Neither side really wanted to go to war with each other anyway. The US still had lingering worries that the Soviets would launch an all-out invasion of Western Europe, which would trigger a US nuclear response, and then we'd all go up in smoke.
When I was in Russia, I saw a lot of memorials and monuments to WW2, from Leningrad to Stalingrad. The size and scope of the untold suffering and misery they endured was beyond my comprehension. But the point was driven home to me that when the Russians say "we don't want war," they're telling the truth.
The interesting thing about the Berlin Wall coming down and the general freeing of Eastern Europe was that that didn't necessarily spell the end of the Soviet Union. The USSR probably still might have remained intact, if not for the abortive coup that took place by the hardline Communists who were against Gorbachev and his reforms. That was a fiasco, and that's what led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It was all perfectly legal. The Soviet Constitution guaranteed the right of any of the Soviet Republics to secede from the USSR and declare independence if they wished. So, that's what they all did.
Perhaps they could have moved a bit more slowly. There were still some loose ends and other things to be ironed out, and many of today's problems between Russia and Ukraine seem to be the result of some of those loose ends.
I will say it was somewhat disappointing that the US didn't use the opportunity to build up friendlier relations with Russia.
Also, much of our militarism and the national security state still remained policy, even though the whole justification for all that was the existence of the Soviet Union and the so-called "Red Menace." Now that the Soviet Union was no more and the Cold War was over, what did we still need all that for? To invade Iraq?
All your thoughts and comments welcome! Now let's cue the music and hear it for the motherland as we all go the gulag together!