How WWI destroyed the Romanov dynasty and created the Soviet Union. Dalrymple examines the Russian Revolution as simultaneously the end of one empire and the beginning of another.
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Highlights
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Revolutions devour their own creators with predictable regularity
The Russian Revolution followed the French pattern exactly: moderates seized power, radicals displaced them, a dictator emerged. The pattern is so consistent it should be considered a natural law of revolution.
The Soviet Union was a Russian Empire under a different name
Despite revolutionary rhetoric about self-determination, the Soviet Union maintained control over the same territories the Romanovs had conquered. The empire changed its ideology but not its borders.