Similarly, it is worthwhile to examine how a Communist revolution (or was the Russian revolution not a Communist one?) can impose a regime that is so decidedly undesirable as that of the Soviet Union.
The French Revolution is - quite rightly - cited as a blemish on the history of democracy, because it turned into such a bloodbath. Future proponents of democracy arguably learned from this - learned such valuable lessons as "checks and balances" and "the popular vote isn't the be-all-end-all of democracy."
Tarring all of democracy with the French Revolution would clearly be unjustified, and tarring all of Communism with Stalin (or all of Christianity with child-raping priests) is equally so. But that does not mean that there are not lessons to be learned from the Russian Revolution that cannot be learned if you insist on sticking to the "they weren't communist enough" story.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Quite.
"But that does not mean that there are not lessons to be learned from the Russian Revolution that cannot be learned if you insist on sticking to the "they weren't communist enough" story."
One obvious lesson is try to avoid someone like Stain from taking over and having almost total power. I.e. try to stick to the most fundamental aspects of communism which are opposed to dictatorhsip.
But the problem with learning from history is that it doesn't exactly repeat itself; Nicaragua in the 80s isn't Russia in the 1920s, etc. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
