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From: tedrick@ernie.BERKELEY.EDU (Tom Tedrick)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Communism as historical tragedy
Message-ID: <11069@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sun, 24-Nov-85 06:18:12 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11069
Posted: Sun Nov 24 06:18:12 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Nov-85 20:52:52 EST
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Reply-To: tedrick@ernie.UUCP (Tom Tedrick)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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One point I would like to make is that the collapse of the
Russian empire was a consequence of World War 1, as was the
collapse of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. The
world wars played a major role in weakening the British
empire. Japan and Italy lost their empires as a consequence
of WW2. There is too much emphasis on some kind of historical
necessity leading to the collapse of these empires. They
might very well still exist had their political leaders had
the intelligence not to fight wars they did not have a
high probability of winning.

Anyway communism took hold in Russia only because the empire
had already collapsed and a partial power vacuum existed, and
they were ready and able to pick up the pieces. It
seems absurd to me to think that the communists could have
overturned the Tsarist regime without some external factor
like a major war playing a role.