I’ve often wondered what the world would look like if Martov had stood up to Lenin when the Bolsheviks split with the Mensheviks, or if the Revolution hadn’t been hijacked from Kerensky and the Provisional Government. Lenin was incredibly authoritarian, especially with Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka, but a lot of the atrocities people associate with him were more or less nasty after effects of the Civil War. People with a grudge to settle suddenly finding themselves in a position of power. Like the execution of the Tsar and his family, which was completely Sverdlov’s fault.

I don’t think Russia would have survived if there wasn’t a strongman at the helm. Whether or not you agree with his policies, he represented actual physical change to so many Russians who had lived generations under the stagnant Tsars. It’s only incredibly sad that he used a lot of Russia’s hopes and dreams against itself to punish the same people who were trying to change the world for the better. It almost leaves a dirty taste in your mouth reading about how he betrayed the ideals of the Revolution. That being said, no side in the Civil War was innocent of crimes. The Whites, the Reds, the Blacks, the Greens; everyone was guilty.

Winston Churchill, who hated everything about communism, once said that “Their (the Russian peoples) worst misfortune was his birth…their next worst his death.” I don’t think anyone can disagree with that.