21e: Conclusions

1. Democracy wouldn't have worked
Prior to the February 1917 Revolution, the only experience Russians had with democracy was in Great Novgorod's heyday - that is, back in the 1400s. Cautious to preserve the autocracy, the Romanov Tsars shunned representative government until 1905; even political parties were forbidden. Even when Nicholas II granted a Duma in his 1906 manifesto, it was only under pressure. He did everything in his admittedly feeble powers to throw obstacles in its path. The intelligentsia, which should been welcomed into Russian public life decades ago, was forced to take a crash course in parliamentary democracy. This crash course was interrupted by the First World War... and so was the Russian Empire.

2. The genius of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
At the risk of oversimplifying somewhat, sometimes history - for whatever reason - produces great people at crucial times in a nation's history. Augustus Caesar was one, as were Emperor Peter I and Empress Catherine II. Abraham Lincoln was another. So, much less fortunately, were Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Vladimir Lenin. He may or may not have been motivated by the execution of his older brother, but Lenin made the revolution his entire life. When the Bolshevik state came about, he made the state his entire life. In all probability he worked himself to death, micromanaging everything that came across his desk, hurling out commands and reproaches over the phone, the telegram, and in writing. There was some semblance of Party democracy left in his day (Stalin would take care of that), but usually it consisted of the freedom to follow Lenin's lead. The Bolsheviks, as a rule, did just that and had the Soviet Union to show for their efforts.

3. Bolshevism as a religion
Lenin demanded, and got, total commitment from the members of the Bolshevik party. The life of a professional revolutionary was hard and dangerous - only true believers could possibly stand up to the strain. Because the Bolsheviks would sacrifice everything for the cause of establishing Communism, they believed that they were also permitted to do anything they considered necessary for their cause. When the Bolsheviks came to power, they immediately tried to wipe out the Russian Orthodox Church, with things like a "League of the Militant Godless" and a journal called "Atheist at the Workbench." This was in line with Marxist teachings, but also politically expedient. After Lenin's death, he was elevated (largely by Stalin) into a semi-divine figure whose every word (as interpreted by Stalin) was infallibly true. Stalin, for his part, played the combined role of Son and Apostle. By basking in Lenin's cult of personality, Stalin's cult of personality grew too. Since Communism was a universal religion, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin were billed not only as the greatest people of modern times, but of all human history.

4. Nationalism and the Bolsheviks
One of the rare instances of Lenin's sincere good will was his view on the nationality question. To Lenin, it was hypocritical for Russian Communists to insist that national minorities (like the Ukrainians, Poles, Georgians, and Belarussians for example) remain part of a Russian Communist nation. Thus he supported national independence for all of Russia's national minorities, putting him at odds with his Commissar for Nationalities, one Joseph Stalin. Lenin's argument was that the world revolution would happen any day, and the new Communist governments would cheerfully defer to the Russian Communists until the arrival of the Communist paradise. That is, that they would follow Lenin's orders too. Eventually, the Soviet Union was established  on just this principle:  a grouping of republics, with Russia at most as the first among equals. Yet the escape clause Lenin insisted on including - allowing disaffected republics to secede - would mark the end of the Soviet Union.