There’s a good book on the political currents of pre-WW1 Russia called “Towards the Flame” by Dominic Lieven.
Without relitigating the whole thing, it doesn’t surprise me people believed in various swirling conspiracies about this: they all make logical sense! If the autocratic faction had been smarter and more cynical, a “Black Bloc” to make a deal with Germany *would* have formed - clearly it was the only way to preserve the autocracy. And various industrialist and intelligentsia types really *were* trying to use the war to liberalize the state. As “Towards the Flame” makes clear, their pressure along those lines was a big factor in pushing Russia into war in the first place.
Often when people talk about wars, they assume that a state has largely unified interests. But that’s only rarely true, as Russia’s tragic example demonstrates. The line between “politics” and “treason” is very thin.
“The Voluntary Organizations clashed with the government several times, demanding personnel changes, before the government eventually cracked down on this behavior. (…) the Voluntary Organizations began a smear campaign targeting members of the royal family and important officials”
This is almost identical to the Prigozhin saga. SHOIGUUU! GERASIMOOOV!
What stuck out to me the most is the liberals who thought that if the Tsar was overthrown that they would have a chance at implementing their own government, rather than the people who actually orchestrated the coup being the ones in charge. As you've mentioned before you see that kind of deranged thinking on the right today when accelerationism is brought up as a political strategy even though in practice it would be 10x harder to achieve any of our goals under totalitarian gay race communism.
But have you been to the Russian Revolution?
Together, we will Love Nuke the World
There’s a good book on the political currents of pre-WW1 Russia called “Towards the Flame” by Dominic Lieven.
Without relitigating the whole thing, it doesn’t surprise me people believed in various swirling conspiracies about this: they all make logical sense! If the autocratic faction had been smarter and more cynical, a “Black Bloc” to make a deal with Germany *would* have formed - clearly it was the only way to preserve the autocracy. And various industrialist and intelligentsia types really *were* trying to use the war to liberalize the state. As “Towards the Flame” makes clear, their pressure along those lines was a big factor in pushing Russia into war in the first place.
Often when people talk about wars, they assume that a state has largely unified interests. But that’s only rarely true, as Russia’s tragic example demonstrates. The line between “politics” and “treason” is very thin.
“The Voluntary Organizations clashed with the government several times, demanding personnel changes, before the government eventually cracked down on this behavior. (…) the Voluntary Organizations began a smear campaign targeting members of the royal family and important officials”
This is almost identical to the Prigozhin saga. SHOIGUUU! GERASIMOOOV!
What stuck out to me the most is the liberals who thought that if the Tsar was overthrown that they would have a chance at implementing their own government, rather than the people who actually orchestrated the coup being the ones in charge. As you've mentioned before you see that kind of deranged thinking on the right today when accelerationism is brought up as a political strategy even though in practice it would be 10x harder to achieve any of our goals under totalitarian gay race communism.