Definitely not absolute power, but there was no reason for radical student to ever expect absolute power. His father was a high-ranking regional bureaucrat and his mother was a wealthy landowner; someone as talented, hardworking and ruthless as Lenin would’ve easily been able to get promoted to a high government post, which would’ve made any future ambitions much easier to achieve. It’d have definitely been easier than overthrowing the government—a pipe dream as late as April 1917.

Jesus fucking Christ. You think overthrowing the Tsar was a pipe dream after the February Revolution.

The Tsarist government was widely regarded as on borrowed time since Bloody Sunday in 1905, and was regarded as unstable even before that. Not only that, but this reflects a complete lack of understanding of ambition of powerful men throughout history.

For someone who tells me that I need to study history (apparently my years in college for just that major were insufficient compared to your collection of worldview-affirming factoids garnered through online games of telephone), you have repeatedly demonstrated an appalling lack of even basic knowledge of the facts of the situation, down to the fucking existence of elections before the overthrow of the provisional government and the prominent participation of socialists from the very start.

I mean fucking yes (more or less, my personal line is February 1917)? Anyone not a true believer would’ve dropped out multiple times over. Speaking of which, is there any body of historiography you’re drawing from here or is it just your (very justified) hate for the guy? What’s your evidence here?

The issue here is, at its core, one of principle rather than Stalin specifically - you are asserting, as I have pointed out multiple times at this point in the conversation, a worldview of total incoherence insofar as revolutionaries are concerned, with any long-time revolutionary being a dedicated ideologue with no possibility of other motivations being their core impetus. In this conception, even the most venal opportunist and constant turncloak is necessarily considered a true believer regardless of their words or their actions by simple exposure to danger over a period of time, because you are apparently incapable of imagining any other reason why people stay a course of action.

It's axiomatic, and utterly fucking braindead, the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from a religious fanatic discussing their theology, not a fucking discussion of history and politics with someone who is supposedly left-sympathetic.

Uh what the fuck? At calling them mass murdering tyrants to stress this point. If you’re just going to read whatever you want into what I say then this is a waste of time.

This fucking you, buddy?

No offense, but yeah no you have to be kidding here. Soviet rule under Lenin and Stalin was what turned Russia into a developed country. Virtually every indicator of a modern (for the time period) quality of life exploded. The idea that they did “nothing but create bureaucratized oligarchy” is simply not a serious historical position, and if you seriously believe that you should get back to studying. This is a position not worth debating.

I mean have you ever seen Trump explaining a coherent belief system?

I haven't seen Stalin explain a coherent belief system either. Yet he's a true believer, and Trump is not. For that matter, why does a belief system need to be coherent to be truly believed in? I can cite any number of religious maniacs with contradictory bronze-and-iron-age belief systems and texts who are nonetheless true believers.

He’s clearly in it for the grift, and he clearly believes he deserves to grift the shit out of everyone, but I doubt he has anything resembling a coherent political vision. However, he didn’t spend decades risking getting arrested or killed by secret police for it—this is what a grifter lookd like.

... Trump absolutely has spent decades risking getting arrested. For that matter, the Tsarist autocracy rarely outright killed political opponents, preferring arrest and internal exile - especially for privileged middle class kids like Lenin, who enjoyed a very comfortable exile.

I mean, the (still fascist) self-proclaimed socialists definitely thought he did up until he killed the shit out of them. Weaponized vagueness is a classic fascist tactic and absolutely does count as not believing in what he said; you’re grasping at straws here.

... his stated view of socialism doesn't even contradict his actions. You're ironically engaging in the traditional fascist tactic of treating words as having contradictory meanings in the same fucking argument.

Doesn’t sound like socialism to me either so no.

But the fascist conception of one-man rule in the workplace DOES sound like socialism to you?

Not to go on a tangent, but as much as you expect. There’s plenty of people comfortable enough to argue about politics online, and the obscureness of the forum is irrelevant. If you calculated the number of deaths per person you’d get a small fraction, which well I make a point of trying but there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. If you have examples I’m all ears though.

Simply by being literate, educated, English-speaking, and with enough time to argue for hours over history, you are necessarily, as am I, sacrificing time which could be spent laboring to save the lives of others.

Do you know how much it costs, even with all the graft and overhead of charity organizations, to provide life-saving supplies to individuals in areas like, say, Palestine?

Do you know how much your time is worth?