Intellectuals and Thugs: The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution was the embodiment of an idea – an idea turned into a political party, ruled by a man who claimed the authority of logic and who killed anyone who stood in his way.

by George Friedman
November 7, 2017

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. It was a revolution based not merely on hope but on the certainty that the human condition could be filled with equality, plenty and freedom. It created a regime that was willing and felt compelled to go to any lengths to create that perfection, but that regime ended in 1991, exhausted by the squalor it had created.

The Russian Revolution was inspired by the work of Karl Marx, and that work was the reductio ad absurdum of the French Enlightenment. The Enlightenment had argued that humanity was engaged in progress – knowledge was constantly accumulating and, with that, the human condition was constantly improving. At the center of this process was reason, which would drive progress. And its main thrust was that the most perfect government was one that promoted the principle of human equality.

The agent of all of this was the intellectual, who placed reason at the center of all things, and therefor…