This year, 2017, marks the centennial of the Russian Revolution, a defining moment in time with ripple effects felt across the world to this day. In the following video, author Laura Engelstein sits down with Oxford University Press editor Tim Bent to discuss the history of the revolution, its global impact, and her book Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914-1921.
Featured Image Credit: [Revolution, Leningrad (Petrograd), USSR], LC-USZ62-75789. Distributed via Library of Congress.
Since the revolution started in October 1917 to the death of Stalin, the Bolshevik or Communist genocide was even worse than the Nazi one. Around 60 million people perished, not only the Imperial family (22 The Emperor, the Empress, Grand Dukes, Grand Duchesses and Princes of the House of Romanov), the entire aristocracy, excepting those who escaped to Western and Central Europe, millions of peasants, the middle classes from the big cities of the Empire, were murdered and even thousands of intellectuals, plus monks, priests, bishops, not only from the Orthodox Church, but Catholics, Lutherans and others as well. Starvation and forced labour were the main causes of death, under the Soviet Regime. Human life wasn’t granted, only the followers of Lenin and Stalin were “people”, the rest were “former people”, which means not human beings. In the 1930’s, Stalin murdered most of the old Bolsheviks who were the entourage of Lenin, many of them were the Georgian enemies. The Russian Revolution was the worst butchery in the XX Century alongside with the Nazis in Germany and Mao in China. These totalitarian regimes were responsible for 140 million lives. We must remember always and never forget or forgive the crimes of Communists and Nazis. Russians are still waiting for a Nuremberg trial for their monstrous regime, but even Putin doesn’t want to have as enemies the CP of Russia. The West had after 1939, a pact with the Devil, Churchill and Roosevelt were allies of a man, whose crimes were only comparable to those of Hitler and later on with those of Mao.