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IPFS News Link • Philosophy: Socialism

30 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Misconceptions Still Drive Socialism

• https://fee.org, Zilvinas Silenas

One thing everyone remembers about the October Revolution of 1917, which brought Vladimir Lenin to power, was that the Bolsheviks toppled the tsar, an incompetent monarch who had run Russia into the ground.

The problem is that's not what happened.

First, the event happened on November 7, according to the modern calendar, not in October. Second, and more importantly, Lenin and his insurgents did not overthrow the tsarist regime. Few seem to remember that Tsar Nicholas II had been dealt with in February 1917. When Lenin cooly ordered Nicholas and his family to be executed without a trial in Yekaterinburg in July 1918, the Tsar had been out of power for more than a year. What the Bolsheviks actually toppled was something resembling a modern democracy with an elected parliament and government.