The Russian revolution. Lenin pre-revolution

[helenpaul]

This is part 1 of what will be a series. This is about Lenin and the beginning of bolshevism. Interesting part on Mussolini at the 50:10 mark. Mussolini was a Marxist.

[helenpaul]

Part 2. Childhood of the socialists

[susano]

My favorite historical subject. I'll drop this here, as well as it provides valuable background and is consistent with extant material I've read written by eyewitnesses/participants. It's three parts, all readable with subscribing though I did subscribe because he's done such a great job:


I’ve decided to write this brief summary of the Russian Revolution just so that readers of this Substack, at least, can understand where I’m coming from when I post about one of my main areas of interest: The Russian Civil War (1917-1921). I was inspired to do this after I wrote a summary of the Kuban Ice March for a post that reproduced a 1918 pamphlet describing that event and the early development of the anti-communist White Army.

Historical documents are tricky because, even if the documents are interesting, the authors (understandably) assumed that readers would know about things that, 100+ years later and several continents away, they don’t necessarily know about. Even a bit of background knowledge can add a lot to peoples’ understanding of these documents.

Some notes on this essay: I’m not trying to write a comprehensive history of the period or provide details on all aspects of Russian political life. I will be writing a few of these summaries over the next few months and I have a vague plan to introduce other subjects when they’re more relevant to the main drama. For instance, I don’t mention the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the Kadets, the Menshiviks, or other major political players in pre- and post-Revolution Russia in this essay. They’re all important, I’ll bring them up later, but my main goal here is to create an accessible narrative that the average person walking off the street can understand without much background knowledge.

I’m not a professional historian, I work in marketing and dropped out of a film studies program in Canada after one semester, but I do read a lot of this stuff. If you’re looking for a more in-depth examination of the Russian Revolution, I strongly recommend Sean McMeekin’s book The Russian Revolution: A New History. That is, without a doubt, the best summary of these events out there. It’s very well-written and easy to understand. Everyone should read it.

https://www.theconundrumcluster.com/...s-introduction