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To: LoisHunt
"...Like slavery and organized crime, the system was run on the fear and threat of physical violence reinforced by actual violence up to and including murder....

Actually, this is demonstrably untrue. (Although any long-lasting system can be so characterized by interestedparties. Observe the treament our Founding Fathers are getting on campus.) However, Lenin's urban/proletarian vanguard believed it to be true and they went out into the countryside to raise the consciousness of the former serfs and peasants of just how horrible the system had been.

They returned a while later to the safe confines of the city--worn down by the stubborness of the rural hayseeds; their block-headed refusal to abandon their ways. Lenin, being an eminently practical progressive, determined that the "Forces of History" required these bumpkins to be gotten out of the way. And they were.

Something the nasty Tsarist system never managed to figure out how to do. It just wasn't progressive enough--as you point out......

32 posted on 02/11/2002 6:50:37 AM PST by LaBelleDameSansMerci
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To: LaBelleDameSansMerci
I don't think its debatable that the peasantry lived lives of misery. I don't think Napoleon was a sweetheart trying to help the Russian peasants/serfs.

But they likely would have been better off if he'd succeeded, "conquered," Russia and united Russia with the rest of Europe. Then the Russians would have overthrown French rule. Ideas of Revolution made their way to Russia throughout the 19th century.

35 posted on 02/11/2002 11:38:38 AM PST by LoisHunt
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