Meet me on the Internet.
I regret to inform you that despite my own political preferences I am not going to approve of any government where the political opponents are oppressed.
A kind, benevolent, and merciful dictator will never (until proven otherwise) be good in my eyes.
I am quite rigid in regards to dis/trusting Britannica and other free and accessible online sources ( e.g. Wikipedia).
In my opinion, if your data, theory, or story cannot survive public scrutiny on the open internet, then the quality of your material probably doesn’t meet my standards.
I began by reading Britannica. I am aware of my black and white thinking and this manifests in me frequently being against everyone and everything.
Although Lenin and Trotsky had carried out the October coup in the name of soviets, they intended from the beginning to concentrate all power in the hands of the ruling organs of the Bolshevik Party. The resulting novel arrangement—the prototype of all totalitarian regimes—vested actual sovereignty in the hands of a private organization, called “the Party,” which, however, exercised it indirectly, through state institutions. Bolsheviks held leading posts in the state: no decisions could be taken and no laws passed without their consent. The legislative organs, centred in the soviets, merely rubber-stamped Bolshevik orders. The state apparatus was headed by a cabinet called the Council of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom), chaired by Lenin, all of whose members were drawn from the elite of the Party.
The Bolsheviks were solemnly committed to convening and respecting the will of the Constituent Assembly, which was to be elected in November 1917 on a universal franchise. Realizing that they had no chance of winning a majority, they procrastinated under various pretexts but eventually allowed the elections to proceed. The results gave a majority (40.4 percent) of the 41.7 million votes cast to the Socialists Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks received 24 percent of the ballots. They allowed the assembly to meet for one day (January 5 [January 18, New Style], 1918) and then shut it down. The dispersal of the first democratically elected national legislature in Russian history marked the onset of the Bolshevik dictatorship.
Naturally this is unfair. I will proceed reading Britannica now.
The events of the revolution were remembered as such by me: the bolsheviks incited the revolution, stormed the palaces, stormed the government buildings. After didn’t hold fair elections for Parliament and instated their rule and their party as the only legitimate government of the region. Later they violently seized various assets of those that owned such things : “Раскулачивание” and various nationalisation of production and commerce. Soon Lenin dies and gets buried, stalin in power, and welcome to poland being bisected.
I assume I have mixed up the order of some events. I wonder if I am expected to check this myself or reply immediately. I will reply, and then go to Wikipedia to read the revolution page.
This post makes me feel uneasy for a two reasons:
This was not a popular twitter post at the time of archival.
This makes the bolsheviks behaviour and capture of government look better, which contradicts my (albeit basic) knowledge of history.
I haven’t had the opportunity to check the syllabi of those colleges yet, nor contact the people who wrote those syllabi to ask them directly as to why they made such decisions. Furthermore I would appreciate further comparison with the higher education institutions in other nations, including former soviet bloc.
In short this post makes a large claim (there is a conspiracy to hide information from the public) which I haven’t verified personally nor seen anyone else but those invloved in this very conversation bring attention toward this supposed conspiracy.
I will what I can to keep this comment updated according to the information I possess.
Kronstadt rebellion (mentioned in the wikipedia article) seems to be highlighting that this model was in fact oppressing: socialists and anarchists.