See, there’s just no parallel for that, across all the centuries of history I know. A totally autocratic government being replaced by a strong democracy. The West has tried to manufacture it once or twice, and that’s miserably failed. Meanwhile, Napoleon was the eventual endpoint of the French revolution, and the American revolution wasn’t actually a big change from the existing colonial structure right off the bat - both Britain and America expanded democratic rights over time afterwards.
If we’re wishing away the Bolsheviks, Trotsky would have had to find someone else to facilitate his ambition; that’s it. Maybe he’d get Stalin’d by them again, or maybe he’d hold on as dictator. Or maybe it would be someone else completely. You say Kornilov’s thing didn’t stick because he was too right-wing, and I don’t know enough to contradict that, but nobody launches a coup because it’s hopeless. One was going to stick.
See, there’s just no parallel for that, across all the centuries of history I know. A totally autocratic government being replaced by a strong democracy. The West has tried to manufacture it once or twice, and that’s miserably failed. Meanwhile, Napoleon was the eventual endpoint of the French revolution, and the American revolution wasn’t actually a big change from the existing colonial structure right off the bat - both Britain and America expanded democratic rights over time afterwards.
If we’re wishing away the Bolsheviks, Trotsky would have had to find someone else to facilitate his ambition; that’s it. Maybe he’d get Stalin’d by them again, or maybe he’d hold on as dictator. Or maybe it would be someone else completely. You say Kornilov’s thing didn’t stick because he was too right-wing, and I don’t know enough to contradict that, but nobody launches a coup because it’s hopeless. One was going to stick.