Wow, what a magnificent thread. I wish the following was more well known: Communists intended to take over the industrial powerhouses of the West which, according to their theory, were advanced enough for the next stage of development - socialism. But they took over a backward country which according to the same theory was totally unprepared for it. Lenin's original plan was to seize power in Berlin, because he thought that Germany had all the necessary prerequisites in place, from sufficient industrialization to a sympathetic population. But I think the opportunity never presented itself, or at least not in time, since in 1917 he had the opportunity to seize power somewhere, and he figured that somewhere was better than nowhere. And of course eventually the USSR did get a bunch of Germany's industrial base in 1945. But they didn't use the opportunity to let that seed grow. They simply exported everything they could to Moscow and then crushed what was left of the bourgeoisie, thus sealing their fate on the semi-periphery (a term I wasn't familiar with but suddenly am enamored by).Lenin's plan didn't work out. Yes, Bolsheviks took over Russia, but they didn't want to take over Russia. They wanted to take over the capitalist core of the world. Immediately upon consolidating their power in Russia they launched an expedition westward. It failed.
all his threads are magnificent. I've read enough history, old and new, determinist and rationalist, to be pessimistic about the future of "Russia." It's always been a left-over periphery, it's sometimes been enough of an antagonist to influence someone else's core, but it has never been a self-sufficient cultural center. I discovered through genealogy and old photo albums that I'm 1/4th Belarusian Jew, and that the aspect of my lineage I'm not discouraging of fled the Pale of Settlement for Moscow in the 1860s and fled Moscow for Boston in the 1880s. I also discovered that "there is insufficient evidence" to say that "beyond the pale", used to describe something so outlandish and horrible that it's considered well outside the norms of everyday civilization, originally referred to Russia. But it feels pretty truthy. Civilization? Prussia, Galacia, Pomerania (Austria/Germany, Turkey/Armenia, Germany/Poland). The Pale? Minsk, Kyiv (Belarus, Ukriane). Beyond The Pale? Moscow.