Another anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution – aka the October coup (putsch) of the Bolsheviks – is a legitimate reason to talk about the ambiguity of history.
Disputes over how the historical process is determined will obviously continue as long as this process itself. In the fate of a person – what is the relationship between the genotype (“scrap”), external circumstances and “free will”, freedom of choice of the person himself (and to what extent is his “internal freedom” recorded in the genome?). So is the fate of the People, Country, State, Civilization, Humanity …
The gene pool – geography, demography, religion, culture, history – is set. But how will the “organism of the Nation” dispose of it here and now? The ambiguity, multivariance is especially visible at the moments of “open fractures” of History. This is usually associated with the actions of individuals, elites …
No matter how much you argue about this “role of the personality”, you cannot escape the obvious. We all know that with the change of emperors and general secretaries, the political history of Russia almost (!) Always made sharp zigzags (the “great reforms” of Alexander II, the “counter-reforms” of Alexander III, the liquidation of the NEP after Lenin, the “thaw” after Stalin, “perestroika” and etc.). It is impossible to separate such fundamental changes from the personality of the person with whose name they are associated. But again: the main question about the RATIO of impersonal factors and the will-role-style of a particular person has no general answer.
For example, imagine that Lenin caught a cold in Razliv and died, while the beheaded Bolsheviks did not dare to rebel and took a compromise position. By the way, this is exactly what other leaders of the party, Kamenev and Stalin, said in March 1917, before Lenin’s arrival. They even considered it possible to unite with the Mensheviks. In fact, Kamenev and Stalin were for the Social Democratic Party and evolution, Lenin was for the Communist Party and the revolution. And now let’s imagine that this force – Lenin – disappeared …
Imagine that Lenin caught a cold in Razliv and died, and the decapitated Bolsheviks did not dare to revolt
True, there is a point of view that the heroes of historical dramas come, play their role and leave the stage at all “not by chance”, not by their own “private will”, but in fact in accordance with the Concept of the Play and the will of the Supreme Director, but suppose everything the same that “the physical body of VI Ulyanov” fell ill and died, regardless of the Logic of History.
So – they pulled out a leaflet “November 7” from the 1917 calendar. What would have happened to Russia then?
For all the speculativeness of such “meaningless dreams”, such disputes are being conducted by historians to this day.
Everyone – including the Bolsheviks-1917 – repeated that only the Constituent Assembly (CA) has the right to decide the fate of Russia. As you know, the Bolsheviks dispersed this meeting – after all, they have already taken this fate into their own hands. Well, and if not for them?
707 deputies of the US were elected: 279 Socialist-Revolutionaries, 159 Bolsheviks, 103 “local socialists”, 68 from “national parties”, 22 Mensheviks, 10 cadets … January 5, 1918, Tauride Palace. The first session was attended by 410 deputies.
Is it Power? Could they elect a government? No. There is not one winning party, a coalition is needed. And the ability of the Russian intelligentsia to come to an agreement during 1917 was clearly demonstrated by both the socialist parties and the Cadets. But there was no time! Moreover, from within the parties themselves (except for the “Bolshevik monolith”) were loose, fragmented, there was no generally recognized leader or “party discipline.”
The Council of Europe adopted three documents at its only meeting. About land (simply repeated Lenin’s “Decree on Land”), a declarative call to the governments of all countries to “start negotiations for peace”, and the country was declared the “Russian Federal Democratic Republic”. There is no reason to believe that the next meetings would be more constructive. And the very ease of dispersal and the country’s indifference to this event clearly indicated that the US is a long-borne, but unviable fruit.
Provisional Government (VP)? But it only lost power during February – October 1917. And not only under the blows of the Bolsheviks – but simply because of the inability to solve any problem.
War! The government may call itself “temporary” out of uncertainty, but the war and death on it cannot be considered “temporary”. And to fight and risk life no longer until the Victory, not for the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland, but “just like that”, before the “start of general negotiations on peace”, out of “loyalty to the allies”, out of a “sense of honor” – SO the army could not fight and did not want to. This is no longer a war, but a talk show, only with real corpses. And the government could not agree to a separate peace.
Military dictator candidate Kornilov failed in his task
National republics. The empire was spreading at the seams, but the VP could neither accept this fact, nor forcefully “pull the paste back into the tube”.
Legal chaos, crime, unauthorized seizure of property (primarily land). The death penalty was abolished, the police were paralyzed, some order was kept in some places only by inertia. What to do with this – the VP did not know either.
Everyone saw a way out only in the “reset” of the country – in “someone’s” dictatorship. But the candidate for military dictators, Kornilov, did not cope with his task.
In this case, the country, most likely, was awaiting a “time of troubles” – territorial and social fragmentation (separatism is already “inside Russia” – Siberia, the Far East), legal chaos – until, due to the self-organization of Large Systems, this Chaos still does not form a puzzle of Dictatorship on the territory that “will remain from Russia.”
Here is an alternative to Bolshevism. Alternative?
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