Post by Drooperdoo on Jul 20, 2005 11:39:33 GMT -5
Nockwasright,
That's exactly what happened--and what happens in every revolution. One historian put it shockingly: "All the Bolsheviks had to do to effectively take over the government was to take over five or six buildings."
5 or 6 buildings???
That is the stuff of revolutions.
Once they had the administration nerve-center of the government, they had the country.
Revolutions are NEVER grass-roots uprisings. Rather, all history is the history of aggressive and organized minorities. To put it in perspective, when the Founding Fathers of the United States decided to start their own country 2/3rds of all American colonists wanted to stay with Great Britain.
So, no, even in a nation pretending to be based on democratic principles, actual democracy played no role in whether the colonies would remain with the Empire or break away.
P.S.--The revolution that ACTUALLY deposed the czar was relatively liberal and democratic. It was the Kerensky government. [The Bolsheviks seized power not from the Czar, but from the fragile (and new) Kerensky government.] But how did the Bolsheviks do it? A fascinating BBC documentary cast light on a little-discussed part of WWI. According to suppressed records (which have recently been de-classified) the British weakened the Kerensky government in an attempt to take over Russia. They used the cover of World War I to illegally send British and American troops over the Russian border to depose Kerensky. Kerensky was weakened by the attack--so weakened that his administration collapsed. The Bolsheviks, taking advantage of the foreign attack, roused the people against the invaders. It was easy to mobilize the Russians when there was a foreign invader.
So in reality the Russian revolution was a comedy of errors. It started with the democratic Kerensky government seizing power from the decadent czarist government. So the Bolsheviks neither deposed the czar, nor deposed Kerensky. They merely took advantage of one of history's biggest blunders [perpetrated by the British Empire, in its attempt to take over a weakened Russia and put in place a pro-Anglo puppet government.]
Some people see parallels between this disastrous policy and the joint Anglo-American attempt to do the same thing in the Middle East. Same dynmamic: Same two armies (composed of Brits and Americans), same techniques . . . .merely a different stage-setting.
That's exactly what happened--and what happens in every revolution. One historian put it shockingly: "All the Bolsheviks had to do to effectively take over the government was to take over five or six buildings."
5 or 6 buildings???
That is the stuff of revolutions.
Once they had the administration nerve-center of the government, they had the country.
Revolutions are NEVER grass-roots uprisings. Rather, all history is the history of aggressive and organized minorities. To put it in perspective, when the Founding Fathers of the United States decided to start their own country 2/3rds of all American colonists wanted to stay with Great Britain.
So, no, even in a nation pretending to be based on democratic principles, actual democracy played no role in whether the colonies would remain with the Empire or break away.
P.S.--The revolution that ACTUALLY deposed the czar was relatively liberal and democratic. It was the Kerensky government. [The Bolsheviks seized power not from the Czar, but from the fragile (and new) Kerensky government.] But how did the Bolsheviks do it? A fascinating BBC documentary cast light on a little-discussed part of WWI. According to suppressed records (which have recently been de-classified) the British weakened the Kerensky government in an attempt to take over Russia. They used the cover of World War I to illegally send British and American troops over the Russian border to depose Kerensky. Kerensky was weakened by the attack--so weakened that his administration collapsed. The Bolsheviks, taking advantage of the foreign attack, roused the people against the invaders. It was easy to mobilize the Russians when there was a foreign invader.
So in reality the Russian revolution was a comedy of errors. It started with the democratic Kerensky government seizing power from the decadent czarist government. So the Bolsheviks neither deposed the czar, nor deposed Kerensky. They merely took advantage of one of history's biggest blunders [perpetrated by the British Empire, in its attempt to take over a weakened Russia and put in place a pro-Anglo puppet government.]
Some people see parallels between this disastrous policy and the joint Anglo-American attempt to do the same thing in the Middle East. Same dynmamic: Same two armies (composed of Brits and Americans), same techniques . . . .merely a different stage-setting.