To me it’s a warning that when you rightfully overthrow an authoritarian you have to be careful not to trade that authoritarian against another one. This seems to happen all the time. Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia and probably many more.
The word "revolution" is probably the most deeply ironic one in the whole of the English language. You fight and die to overthrow the oppressor only to end up back where you started.
The only exceptions are revolutions guided by good ideas and solid values.
Just "overthrow the current leaders and then (??? magic happens here ???) and then we get a better society" doesn't work. You end up where you started or worse because usually the ideas haven't changed.
Intellectual revolutions must precede political ones.
This is why I'm kind of a dull boring centrist politically. I dont support any major attempt to rock the boat because there has been no intellectual improvements that might guide such a thing.
Most revolutionary thinkers don't think replacing the existing leaders will "magically" lead to a better society.
They have grievances with the existing systems, reason to believe those in power won't address those grievances, and reason to believe replacing those in power with people more sympathetic to their grievances will address them.
Also, there has been a boatload of revolutionary thought about how to make a better society over the last century or so. There are clear ways that our system is imperfect and clear ideas of how it could be improved. I'm not sure why you claim there are no "intellectual improvements" over the status quo.
> They have grievances with the existing systems, reason to believe those in power won't address those grievances, and reason to believe replacing those in power with people more sympathetic to their grievances will address them.
So they are doing exactly the same as those in power, which is taking care of themselves.
> The only exceptions are revolutions guided by good ideas and solid values.
Those are mostly not exceptions; successfully uprooting an existing power structure takes more than good ideas and solid values, and replacing it with something that will stably sustain itself both during the revolutionary emergency and afterwards without either falling apart or enabling a power hungry would be despot to exploit it to create an authoritarian regime takes far more than that.
The US “Revolution” was a regional separatist movement led by the local elites and local governments that did not upend the basic local social, economic, or political power structure save for severing the latter from a remote central government (and the resulting new central system was replaced with something more closely approximating, and deliberately modeled on, the old one very shortly after the Revolution in the face of widespread perception of imminent failure otherwise.)
In other words, it mostly wasn't revolutionary and in the one way that it was it mostly failed.
It was a liberal revolution, but not a social one. It definitely shifted the power and I think calling it a revolution is justified. A bit of a side note, but I wholeheartedly recommend https://www.revolutionspodcast.com it starts with the English revolution, then moves to the US, then back to Europe for the French Revolution. There are a lot of episodes on the revolutionary XIX century in Europe and how the “question” slowly changed from the political one to the social one.
Russians are probably the least luckiest people in the world.
* they bore the brunt of Mongol invasion which utterly wiped the aristocracy at the time and set back the countries development by generations and depopulating the land. Luckily, the Mongols stopped there and didn't move further west, saving the populace of Western Europe
* Without warmwater ports, Russia lacked the capacity to participate in maritime trade that bolstered the economy of Western Europe
* Brutal and absolute monarchical rule suppressed any kind of representative government; Serfdom (essentially, slavery) was abolished only in the late 19th century
* Once it got its act together and started Industrializing in good stead... now comes the Crimean War, depleting morale, resources and will of the people
* Oh... was that not bad enough? World War 1, which strains the country so bad, that Germans successfully foment unrest and ultimately Revolution. The Revolution itself ends up being the best strategic decision by the Germans, and the Communist Government signs a treaty essentially ceding large parts of the country to the Central Powers
* But wait! That didn't mean the end of troubles for Russians, and they endure a prolonged Civil War fought not just on the Western theater, but also on their Eastern provinces. Red and White Russians fight each other constantly, appropriate resources from the peasants by force.
* The Country has barely recovered from all of this, Stalin comes to power. The madman purges experienced officers and intelligentsia leading to a very ineffective State and Military; he signs a pact leading to (temporary) peace as they know they can't fight the Germans
* Whoops, nope, the Germans invade anyways, reach as far as Moscow. Millions of Russians perish. St. Petersburg is besieged in one of the most destructive sieges ever, period
* At the end of the war, Russia has lost millions of its population, resulting in a demographic catastrophe that will affect it forever
* Once again, Stalin foolishly throws away a chance for friendship, and instead of working in good faith, we end up in the Cold War. The Soviet Union makes tremendous progress, but is no match for the economic and military might that comes with the vast (and now booming) population of the West. The Soviet Union was _offered_ aid as part of the Marshall Plan, and could have possibly used it for kickstarting their economy and supercharging economic growth but no
* Despite having a highly educated workforce, Soviets fail to capitalize on it, instead becoming the same repressive state they replaced. They fail to take advantage of the technological improvements and ultimately fall far behind
* the final kick: right after the fall of Soviet Union, when the people finally hope to be free and pursue and obtain the benefits of modernity, they're hit by an economic and social collapse. Again, the result is depopulation; crimes are high, lives are wasted by alcohol and tobacco.
And this is just the highlights. So... I do feel bad for the Russian people.
The Eastory channel on YouTube has done short (10 minute) animated videos of the eastern front of WWII - Germany vs Russia - tracking all army unit movements and the movement of the frontline, and summarising what each side was trying to achieve at each stage. (It's more interesting and watchable than my description sounds).
"here, 40k prisoners of war. 300,000 soldiers here. 500,000 POWs. Here, 1.2 million soldiers. Another 120k POWs." on and on and on. The scale of it is just unthinkable.
But TBF, we're doing rather alright compared to Africa, India and some of South America. Because of heavy emphasis on engineering disciplines in the USSR and because oil now, I guess.
Though as years go by, I hate this snow mush more and more. With a passion.
> they bore the brunt of Mongol invasion which utterly wiped the aristocracy at the time and set back the countries development by generations and depopulating the land. Luckily, the Mongols stopped there and didn't move further west, saving the populace of Western Europe
It's actual Russia (now called Rus` or Kievan Rus` in modern history), then Little Russia, now Ukraine.
> Without warmwater ports, Russia lacked the capacity to participate in maritime trade that bolstered the economy of Western Europe
It's bunch of various nations, then Great Russia, when part of them was captured by Russia, then Grand Duchy of Moscow, then Russian Empire (since 1860), now Russian Federation.
Time span | Historical name | Modern name | Language then and now
?? - V | Russia (Русся) | «Old Russa» town | Old Norwegian, not exists
VII-XII | Russia (Русь) | Kievan Rus`, Ukraine | Slavonic, Ukrainian
XVII- pt | Russia (Россия) | Russian Empire, Russian Federation | Many, Russian (modernized Church Slavonic)
There was also the reign of Lenin. It started with the execution of the Tsar and his family, and culminated in the Red Terror. A quote from Martin Latsis when he was deputy chief of the Ukrainian Cheka sums it up:
>Do not look in materials you have gathered for evidence that a suspect acted or spoke against the Soviet authorities. The first question you should ask him is what class he belongs to, what is his origin, education, profession. These questions should determine his fate. This is the essence of the Red Terror.
People always forget one of the craziest blows to Russians: sometime around 1648 tsar Alexei, under the influence of the Orthodox church, banned all secular music. I guess “music is of the devil” was named as the motive, but the actual cause likely were skomorokhs, or folk jokester-singers ― satire was always the strong suite in folk entertainment. So, in the 18th century Russian music had to start again, beginning with the ‘classical’ genre this time. I also suppose this is why folk singing is much better known than really old folk music (though a lot of songs too are late inventions by individual composers). Meanwhile, the church itself didn't have a tradition of music afaik, again preferring singing (rather monotonous, at that).
I myself have seen only brief mentions of this, and thus far couldn't find a definite source detailing this mess.
That's how it goes 9 times out of 10. I learned that from reading Why Nations Fail. It busted the whole myth of "progress" and replaced it with "change".
Not an assumption. Look at the world. Read history. Most times power structures are challenged the challenge isn't successful or it is overthrown and the same or worse power structures replace it.
10% is still optimistic. The Russian, French and Haitian revolutions all worked out pretty horribly and the American Revolution killed a ton of people and destroyed an enormous amount of property to avoid the terrors of Canada.
Washington was quite the exception. So many at the time predicted he would be a dictator, but he gave up power 3 times voluntarily, and set an amazing example.
Your last sentence diminished the value of first sentence. The countries your mentioned are just different not authoritarian and probably are so because of too-much-fingering by imperialist countries.
