I thought it was rather obvious, but there you go.
Like John said, I was merely describing the theory. You don’t think someone who believed in the system would use the phrase “everything becomes hunky-dory”, do you?
The Bolsheviks did not “replace” the monarchy. That is a tired old lie perpetrated by Bolsheviks and believed by only the naive and ignorant.
The Russian Revolution was undertaken without Communist support–they stayed out of the revolution, since it was a “burgeoisie” revolution. AFTER the Tsar had been unseated and a democratic government had begun to form, the Bolsheviks staged a coup, not against the Tsar, but against a democratic revolution.
Oh, so you’re saying for a brief shining moment in the summer of '17, the Russian people were Free? :rolleyes: Give me a frigging break. There was anarchy, and the populace was terrorized by roving bands of militia. Yes, it wasn’t Bolsheviks who started the revolution, but it was Bolsheviks that ended it, and there was no stable government in between. Hence, it is perfectly reasonable to say that the Bolsheviks replaced the monarchy. And it is also perfectly reasonable to say that the Russian people were not free prior to the rise of the Soviet Union. Which, as seems obvious, was all I was trying to say.
The Russian people were never legitimately free prior to the fall of the USSR. It can be of course argued that even now they are not legitimately free, what with Putin starting to look very heavy handed when it comes to governing.
If you want to take a step back and not even worry about whether or not the United States, Capitalism, and Democracy are good/bad and whether or not the USSR, Communism, and Totalitarianism are good/bad it becomes an easier question to answer.
Both sides felt that their ideas, their beliefs were superior, they were ethnocentric. Both sides were strong militarily, economically, politically. The United States wanted to spread its ideals, the USSR wanted to spread theirs. Their ideals were not consistent with one another.
That is basically as simple as it gets. Two big kids in one room were fighting over the same toys, just simple geopolitics as usual as had been going on between great powers for over a thousand years.
Personally I, like a lot of Westerners, tend of course to in general not look at it this way. I know it can be broken down that way, but I think it is an incomplete picture. I think it is an explanation that forgets the fact that the USSR was against personal freedoms that all people in general are entitled to. The freedom and the right to have a say in our government, the freedom and right to have an independent media. The list goes on and on, the USSR was against all of those things. The USSR was all about a select few deciding the fate of hundreds of millions. A select few never caring a bit about anything their subjects thought, but instead running the nation on lies and oppression.