Thread by @Mssr_le_Baron

Anyways, I'd like to elaborate on this. If you've been following me, you know I have a one main schtick, which is Leninist class analysis. It's almost a truism that rich people lean Left. "Coastal elites". But there's a lot that gets lost in "rich people" and "Left".

https://twitter.com/Mssr_le_Baron/status/1503524397579001863

I'd like to break this down using a historical example.

Let's compare the Bolsheviks with their main rival on the Russian Left, the Social Revolutionaries.

Broadly speaking, neither were peasant or workers' parties, with both being dominated by middle or above elements.

But not all "middle and above" elements are the same. What was the class composition of the Bolsheviks? Broadly speaking, the class coalition of support came from a coalition of proles, peasants, and nobility. And what about the members themselves?

1/6th of Bolsheviks came from the highest estate, the nobility, the top 2.4%. 2/3rds of them came from either the noble estate or bourgeoisie, which together were 13% of the Russian population. The remainder were mostly workers and peasants. The top Bolsheviks were 27% noble.

So what about the SRs? Aren't they similar? Only about half of the SRs were workers or peasants, a similar proportion to the Bolsheviks. But a lot is hidden in those figures. The SR party, by comparison to the Bolsheviks, was middle-heavy.

It had a lot of "PMCs".

24.2% of the SR party was clerical workers or minor professionals. Only 4% of the SRs were nobles or high professionals, as compared to over 60% of the Bolsheviks. But that's not the best part. 15.9% of them were students. That's right.

The SRs were fucking grad students.

And not only students. 2/3rds of these students were first generation college students. The SRs were your classic overproduced elites - new entrants trying to get seats at the table at a time when the pie was shrinking. But I'll get back to the shrinking pie later.

That was class composition. But there's more than that. The age distributions of the SRs and Bolsheviks were also different. The Bolsheviks were substantially older. 40% of SRs were under 20. 89.9% of SRs were under 30. The Bolsheviks were wealthy people with a stake in things.

The SRs, by contrast, were younger people who were well-educated but barely holding onto what they had during a time of economic collapse. They were willing to do radical terrorist actions to stir the lower classes to action.

As a rule, the lower classes did not care for this.

Finally, the ethnic component. The Bolsheviks were predominately a non-Russian party. Probably 65% of them were non-Russian in a half Russian empire. The SRs were 65% Russian, so the opposite skew. The Mensheviks were almost all minorities, and 1/3rd Jewish.

And the distribution of ethnic identity in the Bolsheviks was not random. The 2/3rds of them that were minorities also tended to be the bourgeois and noble element of the party - most of the Bolshevik workers were Russians. Whereas the SRs were predominately Russian PMCs.

So who was the Tsar's support base? It was fucking rich assholes, right?

Ah. Not quite.

It was the peasants. Of the 68 peasant deputies in the Third Duma, 34 of them were right of center (Right, Nationalists, Octoberist) and another 15 were Progressists or Kadets (center).

What the fuck? How can that be true?

To answer that, we need to look back at those unstable, chaotic years leading up to the Russian Revolution. But from a new perspective.

There are many narratives of the Russian Revolution and Tsar Nicholas. Broadly, they are as follows:
Menshevik-SR (and our textbooks): The Tsar was a bad autocrat who oppressed the peasants but was overthrown by DEMOCRACY which was snuffed out by totalitarianism

Bolsheviks: The Tsar was a bad man who oppressed the workers and we shot him
White Army: The Tsar was a good but weak man puppeted by the warlock Rasputin and our honorable forces could not overcome Bolshevism

But what about the Tsar's side?

There's a very interesting book that's been republished by @TsarPress. While I don't agree with all of its interpretations, it brings up a number of interesting facts, all verifiable, which start to make all the pieces of the puzzle start to click.

What does Last Tsar by S. S. Oldenburg say? It says that Russia got richer. A lot richer. This is true. It says the Russian peasants were prospering like never before. This is true. Also very true.

It says the court, possessed by madness, grew more hostile to their Tsar.

Madness? No. Patronage.

Reward your friends, punish your enemies.

How could the peasants be getting richer? They needed property. And what is property in this time? In an agrarian economy like Russia's, it meant land. One problem with land: they're not making any more of it.

You have to take it from someone.

What did the new Tsar do when he took the throne? He told the assemblies of notables, the zemstvos, to go fuck themselves. He did land reform. Complete land reform? No. But he did it. Noble land ownership declined by a quarter. That land went to the peasants. They became kulaks.

That's all great, except they'll remember that. They'll bide their time. And they'll never support you. Where was Lenin radicalized? His school. His gymnasia.

Almost 70% of the students there were the children of nobles.

Well, whatever. For the time being, you're still rich. Except... as the rest of the world mechanized, agriculture became more efficient. Why did Lenin admire American industrial farming in its large plots? It produced a lot of grain. Grain flooding global markets.

What does that mean for the landed gentry? Only bad things. Your estates didn't produce as much income anymore - but your costs don't go down! You still have to send your kids to college. You have to get them good jobs.

That's a bad situation. Nobles became more radical.

So why didn't the Tsar fall immediately? I'm a big proponent of the elite lens of political analysis, but elites are not omnipotent. Without popular buy-in, they cannot overthrow the government - the mob would lynch them.

So long as Nicholas II had the peasants, he was safe.

So what is the final narrative of the Russian Revolution? Nicholas II, the benevolent Tsar, lost the trust of his peasants.

They were lured away by the siren song of peace, land, bread.

And down, down, down falls Humpty Dumpty.