Comments by "Voryn Rosethorn" (@vorynrosethorn903) on "Lenin before the Russian Revolution" video.

The ethnic hatred of many of the Bolsheviks towards Russians should be considered, almost all the leadership were not ethnically Russian and the people brought in to suppress the population were a mix of imperial minorities, latvians and Chinese, while the officer class in these groups was heavily of the same background as the Bolsheviks. You might not focus on ethnic interests but many historical groups did as you know. In the civil war the red army was far more representative to Russia due to conscription and the forced induction of tsarist officers than many of the core organs of the party. It should however be mentioned that what happened was not part of any wider plan, the provisional government likely came in with western support but the second revolution was due to the provisional government being so incompetent that the bar for launching a coup was low enough to be below the water table (less far than you think in st Petersburg). Most of these people were also internationalist, Russians were expendable, they sacrificing class enemies in order to bring together the communists of the world movement was natural thinking into the 20's. Doesn't help that they were individually horrible and revolting people usually, especially the party old guard.
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The funny thing was that Latvian troops were the elite of the revolution in the first stages of the civil war, mercilessly massacring rioting peasants and ragtag revolts and being used as a firefighting force to rescue bad situations, but once they were deployed to invade Latvia and do the.same thing ethnic preference kicked in and the soldiers deserted, leaving only the Russian born and speaking ethnic Latvians and Russians who had joined these units due to their prestige making up the manpower of the regiments, they quickly lost elite status. Latvian continued however to form a considerable portion of the footsloggers of the secret police, partly because they weren't deployed to Latvia, partly because they were sort after as they were not reluctant to inflict extreme brutality on innocent Russians. The Chinese were mostly military units and were used to massacre civilians and mutinying red army troops, they were good combat troops, and introduced several horrific methods of torture to the Soviets, including the famous one with the rat and the bucket. Food requisition detachments were probably less heavily ethnically skewed, as the men in them were largely allowed to loot the villages and do what they wanted to the women as long as they brought the grain back, it was a very dangerous job, the peasants understandably loathed them and would killed tens of thousands over the years, but there was never any trouble finding men for such a role.
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Your sources misuse the word moderate, the people sympathetic to reform in Russia were not moderate, they had some backing in specifically st Petersburg aristocratic intellectual circles, the vast majority of the population were however deeply orthodox and viewed the regime in religious terms, this was also the case in much of the aristocracy, including the non-russian aristocracy and especially strong in the army, the army and aristocracy did however have large factions of self-serving and corrupt members who either didn't believe in anything much at all or believed in self-aggrandizement. There had been efforts at reform by earlier tsars, but this was due to enlightenment philosophy and the idea was always for them to remain autocratic, they merely liked enlightenment ideas much more than Christian ones. But by the revolution this had been dead for about a century, the reforms since then were meant to increase the power of the tsar and cut off corrupt nobles, even if historians often have a narrative that attributes different goals to tsars with very much the same aims and intentions. The best person on Russia is probably apostolic majesty, look him up. The massive terror campaign by the left in Russia was not in any sense popular, the Tsar's had a great deal of trouble suppressing pogroms started by angry groups of Russians against who they blamed for such terror, as they had armed militias this violence very often wasn't one sided, and the diaspora at the time spread fake news in the west that has coloured understanding since, the army and cossacks were often committed against those committing the pogrom but as opposition was a state policy during a lost of authority over troops one of the first things they would do would start a pogrom themselves. Russia had a strong intellectual class, almost all of whom were not leftist, but liberal ideas, nationalism and utopianism were relatively common. However a large part were orthodox monarchists, even if some groups saw it as crass to have the same views as the average peasant. Even many of the liberals saw the state as overly weak and passive due to a lack of nationalist, spiritual and Slavic unionist militarism. In a sense the state was weak as it acted in a fairly humane fashion towards people it should have wiped out as a first priority, many active revolutionaries at worst got a few years exile or a prison sentence.
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I highly recommend reading warriors and peasants, the don cossacks in late imperial Russia by Shane O'Rourke, in the introduction it talks about how the reforms in Russia were most likely what destabilized the regime. Given my other reading I think this interpretation has to be taken very seriously, many autocratic nations did not have a transition of social institutions, liberal reforms basically pulled the carpet out from under the actual functioning of the state and society. You can argue that you don't like the old system, but it did work, where as the result was nations in a simultaneous economic boom (often not much bigger however than the one already in the process of happening due to technology, and very often centrally mismanaged rather than naturally developing as was taking place before reforms) and social death spiral.
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@signorasforza354 It was a mixture of exiles (which largely works so long as they were kept there, later generations were politically disinterested but revolutionaries never reforms, their children didn't keep up the fire), immigration for work and other opportunities and offers of free or cheap land to peasants. These groups were part of a single empire for centuries, most stayed in their local communities but plenty of people moved around, some willingly Russified, those especially in the elite ended up a mixture of cultures, it was a hodgepodge. On the other side elements of the Russian elite were extremely bohemian and got into pan-slavic nationalist ideals, which often have western liberal influence, even more confusing when these were ethnic germans or the like. There was also the ancient Muscovy revivalists, Tsar Nicholas II was into that. Politics of the time are often interpreted based on what happened later, but at the time a lot was up in the air. Only the old polish nobility were consistent on not wanting to be part of the empire, basically everyone else, including the polish middle class and peasants tended to shift depending on political context, direction of travel, and what ideas were in vogue at the time. Also I'm British.
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@signorasforza354 The soviet union wanted to spread world communism, they started with the former imperial territories, however the old Russian imperial and territorial ambitions didn't really return until Stalin and even then it was not in the same framework or under the same assumptions, which is what made the break up a relatively simple affair, there were already regional elites. The old imperial regional nobility were much more attached to the centre of power than the soviet elite class, even if they were more self-interested than nationalist. The early soviets hated the Russians, it is not a matter of nation perspectives even if nationalists from all countries involved like to construct narratives that depict it that way. Russian nationalists might be even worse with this as it simply isn't accurate to the motivations involved and they end up praising people who destroyed every element of the core society and culture that they could.
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Your understanding of what motivates socialists is a strawman, read Rousseau, it all comes from him. Ironically you interpret them as having much purer motivations than the real one's.
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@kenon6968 I am referring to ethnicity, many of the minorities they used were Russian speaking and had been there for generations, not just jews, indeed jews were one of the least integrated minorities, even the poles had massive numbers of ethnic compatriots who were indistinguishable from Russians after living in Siberia and places for decades.
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@signorasforza354 Don't understand, need the context of the question.
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@signorasforza354 Rights have never mattered to anything much, they are made up. Unsurprising the world conquest of communism was not bound by pieces of paper. Likewise paper is a sign that nations recognise you, not the thing that makes it so.
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@signorasforza354 You are clearly not an honest actor, the city of moscow does not have control over people, ideologies and nations, it's just somewhere inhabited by them. Your country is at war, surely you have a duty beyond regurgitating nationalist talking points to strangers on the internet. If you care so much then the army will take you, what you will do there will be a more pertinent argument with the Russians than anything that can be said here.
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He does not believe in the populist delusion, in a sense he is a political mastermind even if much less capable as a ruler. His legacy however will hinge on who he picks to be his successor.
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The Japanese war was long after some of the major reforms, notably they changing of the army to a conscription model, which broke down the old institutional structures and culture and changed the make-up of elite units to not longer be composed of politically reliable nobles, something decisive in 1917. Their society was massively expanding and industriallising, but the changes caused very serious stress for a population used to the old society. The Soviets would make matters incomparably worse.
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As for his relationship with women, he likely died of complications with syphilis, he liked women alright.
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