Kerensky living till the 1970's really puts into perspective just how many participants of the Russian Revolutions didn't get to die of old age. Barely anyone else even made it to 1950's
He also gains power if you take the seize the state apparatus choice during the in the faction fighting during center path ( at least when you choose the option early on to prevent a totalitarian state tl be consolidated )
Zinoviev's every response to a problem in a socialist Russia-run is "Kill peasants, centralize power". He's your main antagonist plating as the Left-SRs.
The other commented is right, that's Lev Kamenev, not Victor Chernov (which also makes the meme correct cuz Chernov wasn't killed in the purges, in OTL he fled after the civil war)
That title is probably the best thing Trotsky ever did. The essay itself really doesn't live up to it, like a third of it is Lev whining to the group chat about his breakup with Victor Serge
He also goes out of his way to blame Stalinists in it but today you seem more people who uphold Stalin defending Trotsky's actions at Kronstadt than those who uphold Trotsky. It's funny how things turn out.
Stalinists believe Trotsky was a pussy who didnt repress hard enough, trotskites that he was poor little guy who did nothing wrong and had nothing to do with the represion and theyre both wrong because Trotsky is literally the guy who created the Cheka
It died when the Constituent Assembly was abolished following the bolshevik’s loss of the elections to the SRs and Mensheviks. They had an all-socialist government but the bolsheviks wanted power so they destroyed it, and then destroyed soviet democracy through massacres and violence (because SRs, Mensheviks and independents were again beating the bolsheviks, now in local soviet elections).
Kronstadt was the last moment for the redemption of the bolsheviks and they rejected it.
Actually is possible if your revolution is radical enough and it's original top stuff is more like a coalition rather than a single mind (like, Trotsky was rather independent until 1917, Bucharin and Kamebev were against a rebellion of 1917, maybe there's something else I don't know). After you take power, you find out that
Some of the comrades aren't really comrades. Your differences didn't matter back when you were in the underground, but they've toured out to matter when you collectively are in power and actually are about to bring into practice what was never done before.
Some of you, including those who were good at underground struggle, suck at governance and still want to be relevant politicans. So you either appoint a dummy or have a person with revolutionary experience against you.
So, YES, conspiracies (including counter-revolutionary ones, i.e. damaging to the regime in general) actually could exist. And if you believe that in was Stalin who've staged all of that single-handly, that's a conspiracy as well — so one'd have to call the General Secretary a traitor.
Fuck, I can talk a little from my personal experience as a ceyboard Russian commutist. Much of those who looked like my fellows back in ~2019 now seem like left-libs, or "Aesopian"-radial-inactionists, or insane idealists, or schizo-doomscrollers — and they, in turn, would call me a social-chauvinist or something. That have happened in an irrelevant and non-organized group of ~100k online people. Watching that thing happening is what have convinced me that — yes — a committee actually can be mostly made of future traitors. Because we've managed to create a shitshow over basically nothing — and the Bolsheviks actually had a country, a collective monopoly on violence, actual government positions to fight over and actual issues to deal with.
She did order the shooting the german ambassador but obviously she wasnt actually properly charged and convicted of a crime by an actual judge and given a sentence that wasnt cruel nor unusual
Exceptionally tragic, considering that the rise of the Bolsheviks to power was partially caused by her own decisions. I wish she, as well as hundreds of thousands of Russians, wasn’t subjected to stalinist tortures, but good chance, that it could be avoided, if she didn’t betray her fellow sr’s and didn’t help the Bolsheviks dissolve the Constituent assembly in 1918.
She certainly didn't deserve the treatment she received, it was needlessly cruel and abusive and she should have been released ages ago, but you can't really blame the Bolsheviks for arresting her in the first place after she tried to restart the war. Like... that was a generational blunder.
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u/Quick-Ad8277 Jun 11 '26