Fake History That Inspires Today’s ProgressivesThe American Spectator

Fake History That Inspires Today’s ProgressivesThe American Spectator
Five myths of the Russian Revolution.

Mindful of Voltaire’s dictum (“To hold a pen is to be at war”), we take up the pen against five enduring myths about the Russian Revolution and the advent of socialism. 

The five myths are long-standing pillars of falsehood — used to curtail liberty, justify past atrocities, and (in the name of “progress”) lead free people into servitude.

Calling themselves “progressives,” many people today readily accept most or all of these myths as the truth. 

Filled with socialist yearnings, they have become a new force to be reckoned with in American politics.

• Myth #1 — The false story of a heroic beginning to socialism — as a popular uprising by an oppressed people against social injustice and the cruelties under the Tsar.

In truth, the Russian revolution did not really begin until after the military coup that brought the Bolsheviks to power on Nov. 7, 1917. 

The coup was an almost bloodless event — “as easy as picking up a feather,” Lenin admitted. 

...It was a small group of disaffected soldiers — not alienated workers — who stormed the Winter Palace in Petersburg, arrested members of a feeble Provisional Government, and catapulted Lenin — who enjoyed no widespread popular support — into power. 

The historian Bertram Wolfe quipped:

Lenin seized power not in a land “ripe for socialism,” but in a land ripe for seizing power.

What came next was the real revolution: the elimination of private property, the abolition of all existing laws, the end of individual rights, the rapid descent of civil society into chaos, and the concentration of all authority and decision-making power in the hands of the state..."

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