Anthony Beevor: “The 1917 October Revolution was not a revolution at all but a coup”

The Triggernometry duo (Konstantin Kisin was himself born in the former USSR) interview British historian Anthony Beevor about the Russian Revolution (about which he recently authored this book).

There is a ton to unpack here, but let me give you a few key points:

• the true revolution was not in October but in February 1917, when bread riots morphed into a popular revolt against the tottering Czarist system. The tipping point, as he tells it, was when the Cossacks — who had ruthlessly suppressed prior such riots — changed sides and joined the demonstrators
• this revolution and the ensuing Provisional Government (an alliance from Mensheviks through Constitutional Democrats) did actually enjoy some popular backing
• however, the popular vision of Feburary 1917 being peaceful is not quite correct: Czarist policemen were routinely lynched, for instance
• the October “Revolution”, however, was not a revolution at all but a coup d’état (or Putsch) by a small, well-organized cadre of Bolsheviks (who despite their name were nowhere near the majority of Socialists)
• it had been enabled not just by Imperial Germany [who saw a chance to knock out Russia from the war and hence end its Eastern Front] facilitating the return of Lenin, but [this was new to me] by Prince Lvov arranging for the return of Trotsky (who was in Canada at the time)
• “defund the police” was not invented by American wokebags, but by Lenin (who wanted no power centers that weren’t with the Party)
• Forget the cruiser Aurora and the storming of the Winter Palace — that was Sergei Eisenstein’s propaganda movie. In truth, Aurora’s cannons fired two blanks, and the soldiers slipped into the Winter Palace through an open window.
• As documented amply elsewhere, while Lenin could be a bug-eyed ideologue when it suited him, “every good tactician or strategist is a pragmatist” — and he was capable of making “temporary” U-turns when a given policy clearly was unworkable. (He cites the recycling of Czarist Army officers into the Red Army — “soldier Soviets” not being a realistic command arrangement — and then there is of course the New Economic Policy.)
• If the October “Revolution”/Putsch had not taken place, the last hundred years would have looked very differently