Russia was already in the early stages of capitalist development and in fact in a rapid-growth phase before World War I. Russia was already on par with the West in creativity in culture; it had some daring authors, artists, and composers. It had a fine scientific community. All countries go through the difficult early-industrial stage, and Russia was no exception. That is no easy time because capitalists can get away with doing much on the cheap because there are plenty of peasants willing to do an industrial job that pays a little more than agricultural labor even if the people that they replace died in industrial accidents or were worn out at age 35 and starve to death or die of disease at age 40. Farm laborers go to the Big City and come back with the observation that the streets are paved with gold... they see the lavish expenditures of the elites in their expensive carriages and at pricey restaurants... maybe they can get in on the revelry itself vulgar.
To make a long story short, Imperial Russia conducted a bungled war, a costly stalemate against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, largely) bleeding the country dry. Eventually Russia lost so many troops that the Imperial regime could no longer defend itself effectively, and its erratic leadership made revolution a certainty. The Provisional Republic did what it could, but the Central Powers would not give the Kerensky government a chance to withdraw from the war and lick its wounds. Lenin would surrender great swaths of territory to the victorious Central Powers because of his vision that Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey would themselves fall to revolutions like his.. and align themselves with his Socialist revolution, making defeat in the Great War irrelevant to Russia. It almost worked.
Almost means not.
Lenin instituted a political order much more barbarous than anything else in Europe at the time, and Stalin made it even more full of death and misery. It took Hitler to approach Stalin in horror, and for a short time Hitler surpassed Stalin, in part by adopting Stalin's methods of state terror, including concentration camps resembling Stalinist Gulags.
To make a long story short, Imperial Russia conducted a bungled war, a costly stalemate against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, largely) bleeding the country dry. Eventually Russia lost so many troops that the Imperial regime could no longer defend itself effectively, and its erratic leadership made revolution a certainty. The Provisional Republic did what it could, but the Central Powers would not give the Kerensky government a chance to withdraw from the war and lick its wounds. Lenin would surrender great swaths of territory to the victorious Central Powers because of his vision that Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey would themselves fall to revolutions like his.. and align themselves with his Socialist revolution, making defeat in the Great War irrelevant to Russia. It almost worked.
Almost means not.
Lenin instituted a political order much more barbarous than anything else in Europe at the time, and Stalin made it even more full of death and misery. It took Hitler to approach Stalin in horror, and for a short time Hitler surpassed Stalin, in part by adopting Stalin's methods of state terror, including concentration camps resembling Stalinist Gulags.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
