You have to give up favorite words.

KGB was harder. :)))

Not all SRs went around armed looking for a target.

So? A well-organised party in an authoritarian state would be ill-advised to recommend that all its cadres become terrorists. Take the Provisional IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Tamil Tigers, etc., etc., as examples of this tendency to specialise. The point is, that the SRs maintained a terrorist cadre.

Like I said, I was surprised by the figure as well. I’ve done a little research on it since last evening, but haven’t found any corroborative info.

Also, SR were not Social Revolutionaries BUT SocialIST Revolutionaries. They can be considered well to the left of the Bolshevist clique and appeared very genuine about carrying out a revolution, whereas Leninism swapped one authoritarian state for another, moreover, one that became increasingly authoritarian, interventionism notwithstanding.

Again, so? You’re only ‘genuine’ about revolution in a violent situation if you are left holding the gun, or it is prised from your dead hands.

Also, SR were not Social Revolutionaries BUT SocialIST Revolutionaries. They can be considered well to the left of the Bolshevist clique and appeared very genuine about carrying out a revolution, whereas Leninism swapped one authoritarian state for another, moreover, one that became increasingly authoritarian, interventionism notwithstanding. Workers became no better off. The “bread for all” slogan is ironic in view of the fact that just before he got popped by Feiga (1918), Lenin was stopped by another woman demanding a stop to bread being confiscated from people in the city by armed “revolutionaries”. Lenin’s guards throught that Kaplan was another “petitioner”.

If it could be demonstrated that the alternative leaders of Russia were upholding the high principles and practices of Millsian liberalism, or anything vaguely similar to it, then perhaps their moral outrage may be to some retrospectively useful purpose.

For example, long before the Bolsheviks were in any position to mount a challenge to the Provisional Government, in July 1917, Kerensky sent his bovver boys in to wreck Bolshie headquarters and to attempt to assassinate Lenin and other leading Bolshies.

Lenin was still on the run the morning of the October seizure of power.

Or is there a special rule that anti-Bolshie violence is always ok — the retrospective moral judgement of history clause?

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory

The Battalion fought with initial ferocity but with dwindling enthusiasm in Kerensky’s ill-fated June Offensive against the Germans.

Bochkareva, though, did not lose her fervour. She was injured more than once in the fighting. At one point in the offensive, Bochkareva encountered one of her soldiers copulating with a Russian male soldier in a shell-hole. Infuriated, she bayoneted the woman on the spot.

One can only conclude that the backsliding amazon was at the moment of her violent death “on top”.

Pipes is a strident Bolshie-hater. He is keen to minimise the crimes of all other groups to make the Bolshies seem uniquely evil.

I was surprised by the figure quoted myself.

It comes from a Russian doco “The Russia We Lost”, an anti-Communist doco made in the earlyish 1990s, which decries all violence in Russia, not just Bolshie violence.

There were of other groups such as the Maximalists, who went not only after gumment officials but also landlords and “exploiters”. I guess if we had Maximalists around now, they’d be going after company executives who pay themselves millions while sacking workers and worse, rob them of their entitlements. But I digress.

Before being shot, Fannie Kaplan said: “I shot Lenin because I believe him to be a traitor (to the cause, presumably)…”By living long, he postpones the idea of socialism for decades to come.” She wasn’t wrong. Lenin may have killed the idea altogether by hijacking the mother of all revolutions. Stalin pretty much drove the final nail in its coffin in Spain.

PS But then she did shorten his life and look what happened next.

“Panmongolism–a wild, wild word;
But sweet it falls upon mine ear.�

Vladimir Solovyov

You are but millions. Our unnumbered nations
Are as the sands upon the sounding shore.
We are the Scythians! We are the slit-eyed Asians!
Try to wage war with us–you’ll try no more!

You’ve had whole centuries. We–a single hour.
Like serfs obedient to their feudal lord,
We’ve held the shield between two hostile powers–
Old Europe and the barbarous Mongol horde.

Your ancient forge has hammered down the ages,
Drowning the distant avalanche’s roar.
Messina, Lisbon–these, you thought, were pages
In some strange book of legendary lore.

Full centuries long you’ve watched our Eastern lands,
Fished for our pearls and bartered them for grain;
Made mockery of us, while you laid your plans
And oiled your cannon for the great campaign.

The hour has come. Doom wheels on beating wing.
Each day augments the old outrageous score.
Soon not a trace of dead nor living thing
Shall stand where once your Paestums flowered before.

O Ancient World, before your culture dies,
Whilst failing life within you breathes and sinks,
Pause and be wise, as Oedipus was wise,
And solve the age-old riddle of the Sphinx.

That Sphinx is Russia. Grieving and exulting,
And weeping black and bloody tears enough,
She stares at you, adoring and insulting,
With love that turns to hate, and hate–to love.

Yes, love! For you of Western lands and birth
No longer know the love our blood enjoys.
You have forgotten there’s a love on Earth
That burns like fire and, like all fire, destroys.

We love cold Science passionately pursued;
The visionary fire of inspiration;
The salt of Gallic wit, so subtly shrewd,
And the grim genius of the German nation.

We know the hell of a Parisian street,
And Venice, cool in water and in stone;
The scent of lemons in the southern heat;
The fuming piles of soot-begrimed Cologne.

We love raw flesh, its color and its stench.
We love to taste it in our hungry maws.
Are we to blame then, if your ribs should crunch,
Fragile between our massive, gentle paws?

We shall abandon Europe and her charm.
We shall resort to Scythian craft and guile.
Swift to the woods and forests we shall swarm,
And then look back, and smile our slit-eyed smile.

Away to the Urals, all! Quick, leave the land,
And clear the field for trial by blood and sword,
Where steel machines that have no soul must stand
And face the fury of the Mongol horde.

But we ourselves, henceforth, we shall not serve
As henchmen holding up the trusty shield.
We’ll keep our distance and, slit-eyed, observe
The deadly conflict raging on the field.

We shall not stir, even though the frenzied Huns
Plunder the corpses of the slain in battle, drive
Their cattle into shrines, burn cities down,
And roast their white-skinned fellow men alive.

O ancient World, arise! For the last time
We call you to the ritual feast and fire
Of peace and brotherhood! For the last time
O hear the summons of the barbarian lyre!

1918

The Social Revolutionaries also received the majority of votes in the December 1917 Constituent Assembly Elections promised by Lenin upon the Bolshevik seizure of power.

Thus, the Social Revolutionaries were a long-standing and powerful electoral force both before and after the two revolutions of 1917.

Interestingly, members of several factions of this party were also the most enthusiastic terrorists in Russia. It is estimated that SRs killed about 20,000 public officials in Russia in 1905 and 1906. SRs were the model for the stereotypical bearded, bomb-throwing “anarchist’ of popular culture.

SRs were both very popular and incredibly violent people. The fact that they shot, stabbed and fragmented thousands of Russian officials seems only to have augmented their popularity.

Thus, it is important to note that in Russia there was scant respect for due process, peaceful assembly, rule of law.

To expect the Bolsheviks to be different from all other major political groups in this regard is just unrealistic.

SRs like Kaplan had been killing their political enemies for a long time. This sort of behaviour was quite normal in the Russian political context.

So Lenin, who was a late starter in this game, proved to be better than his opponents at it?

Big deal.

——————————————-

“She fronted Lenin and let go three shots (Eat this Vlad!)”
Tanantino would have added “You Commie PUNK!” to spell it out for American audiences. Your scripts have movie written all over them, Sir Henry.

CK, Cleo bathed in ass’s milk
Vlad loved his tubs of blood
Today’s sad liquid metaphor
Lies slithering in the mud

I think that is a quite realistic summation of the possible alternatives to Bolshevik dictatorship. It is not commonly known that the Left-Mensheviks, Left-Populists, Maximalists and Anarcho-syndicalists were every bit as revolutionary as the Bolsheviks but believed in worker council democracy. I am looking forward to reading this series

This is one of the great unknown unknowns - had he lived, would he have constrained the bloodletting that Stalin unleashed?

Given young Vlad’s delight in bathing in everyone else’s blood, I very much doubt it.