Yes, and the Bolsheviks decided to respond to the idea of peace by unilaterally walking out of peace talks, leading to German advances in the Eleven Days even more disastrous than the Kerensky Offensive.
"Yes, Bolsheviks initiated peace talks and this proves that they were pro-war. No, I will not elaborate." Why are you pretending like it was not the Bolsheviks that tried to pull Russia out of the war? Sure, the decision to reject the treaty was idiotic, but the peace talks and even Brest-Litovsk, for all of it's harshness were due to the Bolsheviks trying to end the war, not prolong it.
The only difference between the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks is that the Bolsheviks, unlike the Provisional Government, was willing and able to kill dissidents when push came to shove, and thus survived long enough to (a) be forced to come to the table and (b) rewrite history so that they were always the party of peace.
Yeah, it was a bit hard to exterminate the opposition for Kerensky and the boys because most of the Army WAS the opposition. I wonder why didn't he get a medal for NOT gassing the fucking leftists, that's a lot to ask for already. Hey what did Denikin and Kornilov do when oh shit oh fuck
During the Denikin regime, the press regularly urged violence against Jews. For example, a proclamation by one of Denikin's generals incited people to "arm themselves" in order to extirpate "the evil force which lives in the hearts of Jew-communists." In the small town of Fastov alone, Denikin's Volunteer Army murdered over 1,500 Jews, mostly the elderly, women, and children. An estimated 100,000 to 150,000 Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia were killed in pogroms perpetrated by Denikin's forces as well as Petlyura's nationalist-separatists.[8] Hundreds of thousands of Jews were left homeless and tens of thousands became victims of serious illness.[9]
In the Don Province, the Soviet government was displaced by a regime headed by Pyotr Krasnov formed in April 1918. According to Walter Laqueur, more than 45,000 people were shot or hanged by Krasnov's White Cossack regime, which lasted until the Red Army conquered the region following their victory at Tsaritsyn.
Mass executions occurred in 1918 in territories under White occupation. In one incident, commander of the 3rd Division of the Volunteer Army, M. Drozdovsky, gave an order to shoot more than 1,000 captured prisoners.[citation needed]
In 1918 when the Whites controlled the Northern Territory with a population of about 400,000 people, more than 38,000 were sent to prisons. Of those, about 8,000 were executed while thousands more died from torture and disease.[10]
Ayy there we go, when the REAL democracy got it's hand on an army it did what it did best - exterminate the jews. Freedom and liberty, baby
What about our boy, one country, one nation, one Supreme Leader Kolchak do?
In November 1918, after seizing power in Siberia, Admiral Kolchak pursued a policy of persecuting revolutionaries as well as Socialists of several factions. Kolchak's government issued a broadly worded decree on 3 December 1918 revising articles of the criminal code of Imperial Russia "in order to preserve the system and rule of the Supreme Ruler". Articles 99 and 100 established capital punishment for assassination attempts on the Supreme Ruler and for attempting to overthrow the authorities. Under Article 103, "insults written, printed, and oral, are punishable by imprisonment". Bureaucratic sabotage under Article 329 was punishable by hard labor from 15 to 20 years.[1] Additional decrees followed, adding more power. On 11 April 1919, the Kolchak government adopted Regulation 428, "About the dangers of public order due to ties with the Bolshevik Revolt", which was published in the Omsk newspaper Omsk Gazette (no. 188 of 19 July 1919). It provided a term of 5 years of prison for "individuals considered a threat to the public order because of their ties in any way with the Bolshevik revolt". In the case of unauthorized return from exile, there could be hard labor from 4 to 8 years. Articles 99-101 allowed the death penalty, forced labor and imprisonment, and repression by military courts, and it also imposed no investigation commissions.[1]
An excerpt from the order of the government of Yenisei county in Irkutsk province, General. S. Rozanov said:
'Those villages whose population meets troops with arms, burn down the villages and shoot the adult males without exception. If hostages are taken in cases of resistance to government troops, shoot the hostages without mercy.'[1]
A member of the Central Committee of the Right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries, D. Rakov wrote about the terror of Kolchak's forces:
'Omsk just froze in horror. At a time when the wives of dead comrades, day and night looked in the snow for bodies, I was unaware of the horror behind the walls of the guardhouse. At least 2500 people were killed. Entire carts of bodies were carried to a city, like winter lamb and pork carcasses. Those who suffered were mainly soldiers of the garrison and the workers.'[11]
In March 1919 Admiral Kolchak himself demanded one of his generals to "follow the example of the Japanese who, in the Amur region, had exterminated the local population".[6] Kolchak's regime also used mass floggings,[12] especially with rods.[13] Kolchak issued orders to raze to the ground whole villages.[13] In a few Siberian provinces, 20,000 farms were destroyed and over 10,000 peasant houses burned down.[13] Kolchak's regime destroyed bridges and blew up water stations.[13]
In the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East, extraordinary cruelty was practiced by several Cossack warlords: B. Annenkov, A. Dutov, G. Semyonov, and I. Kalmykov. During the trial against Annenkov, there was testimony about the robbing peasants and atrocities under the slogan: “We have no restrictions! God is with us and Ataman Annenkov: slash right and left!”.[14] In September 1918, during the suppression of peasant uprisings in Slavgorod county, Annenkov tortured and killed up to 500 people. The village of Black Dole was burned down, after which peasants were shot, tortured, and hanged on pillars, including the wives and children of the peasants. Girls of Slavgorod and surrounding areas were brought to Annenkov's train, raped, and then shot. According to an eyewitness, Annenkov behaved with brutal torture: victims had their eyes gouged and tongues and strips of their back cut off, were buried alive, or tied to horses. In Semipalatinsk, Annenkov threatened to shoot every fifth resident if the city refused to pay indemnities.[15]
On May 9, 1918, after Ataman Dutov captured Alekasandrov-Gai village, nearly 2,000 men of the Red Army were buried alive. More than 700 people of the village were executed. After capturing Troitsk, Orenburg, and other cities, a regime of terror was installed. One prison in Orenburg contained over 6,000 people, of whom 500 were killed just during interrogations. In Chelyabinsk, Dutov's men executed or deported to Siberian prisons over 9,000 people. In Troitsk, Dutov's men in the first weeks after the capture of the city shot about 700 people. In Ileka they killed over 400. These mass executions were typical of Dutov's Cossack troops.[16] Dutov's Executive order of 4 August 1918 imposed the death penalty for evasion of military service and for even passive resistance to authorities on its territory.[15] In one district of the Ural region in January 1918, Dutov's men killed over 1,000 people.[16] On 3 April 1919, the Cossack warlord ordered his troops to shoot and take hostages for the slightest display of opposition. In the village of Sugar, Dutov's men burned down a hospital with hundreds of Red Army patients.[16]
The Semenov regime in Transbaikalia was characterized by mass terror and executions. At the Adrianovki station in summer of 1919, more than 1,600 people were shot. Semenov himself admitted in court that his troops burned villages. Eleven permanent death houses were set up, where refined forms of torture were practiced.[17] Semyonov personally supervised the torture chambers, during which some 6,500 people were murdered.[18]
Major General William S. Graves, who commanded American occupation forces in Siberia, testified that:
'Semeonoff and Kalmikoff soldiers, under the protection of Japanese troops, were roaming the country like wild animals, killing and robbing the people, and these murders could have been stopped any day Japan wished. If questions were asked about these brutal murders, the reply was that the people murdered were Bolsheviks and this explanation, apparently, satisfied the world. Conditions were represented as being horrible in Eastern Siberia, and that life was the cheapest thing there. There were horrible murders committed, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks as the world believes. I am well on the side of safety when I say that the anti-Bolsheviks killed one hundred people in Eastern Siberia, to everyone killed by the Bolsheviks.'[19]
If the provisional government had come to terms, you bet your bippy that Lenin and especially Trotsky would have been at the forefront of bemoaning this national humiliation that they could have prevented (...)
Lenin on the war in 1914Ah yes, Bolsheviks, the famous advocates of national pride. Got anything else than poorly aimed mockery, like evidence?
A particularly spicy excerpt from Lenin in November, 1914:
For us, the Russian social democrats, there can be no doubt that from the standpoint of the working class and of the labouring masses of all the nations of Russia, the lesser evil would be the defeat of the tsarist monarchy, the most reactionary and barbarous of governments, which is oppressing the greatest number of nations and the largest mass of the population of Europe and Asia.
A tasty morsel from Trotsky in 1914 "The War and the International":
However, let us see if there is not something really to be said on this side of the question. Is it not possible that the defeat of Czarism might actually aid the cause of the Revolution?
As to such a possibility, there is nothing to be said against it. The Mikado and his Samurai were not in the least interested in freeing Russia, yet the Russo-Japanese War gave a powerful impetus to the revolutionary evonts that followed.
Consequently similar results may be expected from the German-Russian War.
So, uh, if you're suggesting Lenin and the boys only turned on the war effort when it suited them, then you must talking of different Lenins and different boys because that just is wrong.
(...)oh, by the way, where's our land? Why are you trying to form a government first? Just take the land and give it to everyone; no need for governments or constitutions or elections.
Aye mate you might be mistaking bolsheviks for anarchists. Marxist-Leninist thought didn't require the immediate dissolution of the state. I can't really respond to this with anything else but "try again with a more appropriate strawman".
If we're being passive-aggressive and impugning the intelligence of others, I would also like to remind people that the Russian Civil War was started by the Bolsheviks overthrowing the Provisional Government, and thus has absolutely no bearing on justifying why the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in the first place.
Never said otherwise, (this time I'm not actually trying to insult you) are you sure you haven't misread my post?
I would also like to remind people that the tsar had absolutely no support, that monarchism in the White faction was one of the myriad reasons it couldn't gain popular support and that officially restoring Nicholas or Alexei would have hastened its defeat by deepening the divides between the various factions. Preventing them from evading justice, certainly, but let's not pretend that Lenin launched his coup knowing full well that the very next year, a White faction that didn't even exist in 1917 would be marching on Yekaterinburg where he had stashed them away.
If Lenin had your hindsight then we would already have a lunar colony! Too bad neither Lenin nor Trotsky nor Bukharin nor Zinoviev nor Stalin nor any other member of the Party had access to the knowledge we have now and therefore been able to aptly determine the optimal solution to any crisis. Alas, not even the immortal science of Dialectical Materialism allows the mighty power of prophecy.
Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this is a silly way to pose an argument, and implying people don't know things instead of just presenting your argument calmly and reasonably without impuging their intellects about "little known things" that aren't in fact "little known" is a rather offensive way of posting.
Yeah I could give you the benefit of the doubt and be polite, but what for? If you're misinformed, then you'll either change your mind when presented with facts and then your disdain for me won't matter, or you'll ignore the facts in order to satiate antipathy towards me. While the former is preferable, I quite frankly don't know enough about and don't care enough to learn about you to conform my speech towards your preferences, so I'll simply content myself with dickish smug satisfaction of winning an internet argument. If you're wrong on purpose, then my insults are justified and I stand by them.
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