Not to defend Lenin (he sucks for other reasons, including the secret police bit), but to be fair:
But saying he betrayed the revolution implied he had any part in it in the first place.
It was the Bolsheviks that overthrew the provisional government, and they had been agitating for more Soviet power before that. They were absolutely an important part of the revolution.
and won the 1917 constitutional assembly vote.
The split of the SRs, had it (edit: fully) taken place before voting rolls were announced, would’ve almost certainly given the Bolshevik-Left SR coalition a majority.
betrayed the revolution, starting the Russian Civil War.
The idea that anything resembling socialism was going to happen without civil war is a fantasy. The people who would become the Whites obviously weren’t trying to restore democracy, and democracy wouldn’t have stopped them. I mean hell the Whites’ Volunteer Army predates the overthrow of the assembly. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that reactionaries don’t actually care about democracy. The only way to avoid civil war would’ve been to let the reactionaries win before it started.
To reiterate, fuck Lenin for turning post-revolutionary Russia into a one-party police state, but some of these charges don’t make sense.
Not to defend Lenin (he sucks for other reasons, including the secret police bit), but to be fair:
It was the Bolsheviks that overthrew the provisional government, and they had been agitating for more Soviet power before that. They were absolutely an important part of the revolution.
The split of the SRs, had it (edit: fully) taken place before voting rolls were announced, would’ve almost certainly given the Bolshevik-Left SR coalition a majority.
The idea that anything resembling socialism was going to happen without civil war is a fantasy. The people who would become the Whites obviously weren’t trying to restore democracy, and democracy wouldn’t have stopped them. I mean hell the Whites’ Volunteer Army predates the overthrow of the assembly. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that reactionaries don’t actually care about democracy. The only way to avoid civil war would’ve been to let the reactionaries win before it started.
To reiterate, fuck Lenin for turning post-revolutionary Russia into a one-party police state, but some of these charges don’t make sense.