Originally Posted by Eric5273

Ummm...what are you talking about? I don't know what version of Russian history you have learned....

There was no socialism prior to 1917. Russia was 100% capitalist, much more capitalist than we are here in the US. There was no welfare, there was no social programs of any kind. There was not even a public education system. Only private schools for the wealthy who could afford it. The wealthy elite landowners owned 99.9% of the wealth, and everyone else was poor, illiterate/uneducated and starving to death. Kind of like Mexico or much of Africa is today. Russia was a third world country, only about 40 years removed from Feudalism.

And I do indeed know this, because my family came from there during that period. Things were terrible there.

As for Lenin, he and his people were pushing for democracy for more than a decade before 1917. In 1907 the Czar finally gave in and allowed for democratic reforms, and a parlament was elected. But a couple of years later, the Czar got fed up at the laws they were passing, and he disolved the parlament and banned democracy. Then when he entered Russia into a very unpopular war (WWI) and too many Russian kids started coming back in body bags, the public got even more angry.

Lenin was more popular among the Russian public than George Washington was here during the American revolution. If he had lived, things surely would have been different. But he died in 1925, while they were still fighting a war against the US & Britain. His logical successor was supposed to be Trotsky. But a coup took place and Stalin seized power. Trotsky and his people (i.e. Lenin's people) fled the country and never returned. Trotsky was later murdered by the KGB.