108 Years Since the Bolshevik Revolution: The Sealed Train to Fire and Brimstone
Churchill promptly recognized the Bolshevik danger. In several speeches throughout his career, and as early as 1919, he advocated for “strangling” Bolshevik ideology “in its cradle.
Yesterday marked the 108th anniversary since the Bolshevik Revolution, which took place on November 7th, 1917 (October 25th, according to the Julian Calendar). Rarely has a local event produced such a profound global effect as the October Revolution, which ultimately enslaved billions around the world and caused mass murder and famine at an unprecedented rate.
The events of October 1917 are largely familiar, but less well-known is the nefarious role of Germany in facilitating the Revolution. Tired of battling various forces in World War I, the German authorities arranged for Lenin, his wife, and some of his associates to travel by train from Zurich to Finland in “sealed” cars. This meant that the carriages with the Russian revolutionaries were locked and had the “extraterritorial” status of a foreign embassy to prevent border controls and document checks. A Swiss communist by the name of Fritz Platten liaised between the German officers on board the train and the Russian Bolshevik exiles.
The Germans were hoping that the return of Lenin and his associates to Russia would destabilize the country and thus indirectly help Germany in the war outcome. Little did they know that in addition to the mayhem that ensued in Russia, this episode would ultimately set large parts of the world ablaze in a totalitarian inferno. Churchill commented:
Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or of cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.
No sooner did Lenin arrive than he began beckoning a finger here and a finger there to obscure persons in sheltered retreats in New York, in Glasgow, in Bern, and other countries, and he gathered together the leading spirits of a formidable sect, the most formidable sect in the world, of which he was the high priest and chief.
With these spirits around him he set to work with demoniacal ability to tear to pieces every institution on which the Russian State and nation depended. Russia was laid low. Russia had to be laid low. She was laid low to the dust.
Today, over a century later, the results are dismal — over 100 million murdered globally and billions starved and deprived of opportunities for normal lives. What is even more insidious, perhaps, is that the ideology of the October Revolution infected and conquered the education, media, and culture of the self-doubting West.
Mamdani’s election and the Western youth’s flirtation with socialism are but the latest disasters in the formidable list of calamities that the communists and their kindred ideologues have inflicted on mankind while completing their “long march through the institutions.” Our country, or at least half of it, remains the mightiest bulwark against the ever-multiplying metamorphoses of this toxic worldview, which functions under numerous guises of overlapping doctrines — most recently embodied by wokeism, intersectionality, Third-Worldism, and the sinister red-green-and-blue alliance.
But we must be ever-vigilant to marginalize the enemy from within by winning the long-term battle for the soul of America and the West. For this purpose, we must use every lawful means to disarm the influence of destructive ideologies on the media and education. We must reverse the “long march through the institutions” and help restore the cultural dominance of American and Western values.
Churchill promptly recognized the Bolshevik danger. In several speeches throughout his career, and as early as 1919, he advocated for “strangling” Bolshevik ideology “in its cradle.” In a House of Commons address in January 1949, he concluded:
I think the day will come when it will be recognized without doubt, not only on one side of the House, but throughout the civilized world, that the strangling of Bolshevism at its birth would have been an untold blessing to the human race.
Unfortunately, Bolshevism was not nipped in the bud, and the civilized world today has failed to condemn it in a united and meaningful way.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Several here have been to the Soviet Union…. I studied (limited) there in late 1971 and early 1972 during the Re-Stalinization period. Didn’t last long as the Politburo was very aged.. The single most important point for me was the ability (hopefully) to get on a plane and leave the USSR.
A supervisor for our trip was a former Russian citizen, her family left before the complete collapse of Russia into the USSR. One of her primary goals was to meet her first cousin whose family had stayed and as part of the same aristocracy was reduced to washer woman for her life. Two points… while a US citizen, the USSR considered her still under all control of the USSR. Second point… I was at the meeting of cousins…. one attractive older woman and the other… beaten into the ground… but a least alive. I saw little old women hand scrubbing the stairs of the Moscow subway.
As for my two favorite Leftists (David Remnick and Anne Applebaum) either their feelings on Mamdani are behind paywalls or not obvious otherwise. They should know better about socialism/communism but they are hard left as far as I can tell despite writing so much about the disaster of communism. Maybe they see a road to utopia in socialism I can’t see.
It’s a striking parallel to today’s youth being enamored with communism and socialism.
It was almost all stupid young people – something like 75% of the Bolsheviks were under the age of 30, stupid enough to think that they were going to just magically make everything better by killing the rich and nobility and ‘redistributing’ all that greedy money they were hoarding.
“Yesterday marked the 108th anniversary since the Bolshevik Revolution”
The October “revolution” was more in the nature of a putsch, The actual revolution took place in February (Julian Calendar) with the overthrow of the Czar and the formation of the provisional government with Alexander Kerensky as the dominant personality. Like today’s Republicans, Kerensky was timid and afraid to wield power eventually ending up living in Queens New York. Kerensky should have arrested Lenin. British agents who were present when Lenin arrived on the sealed train should have assassinated him. Rival socialists had no such qualms. Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist Revolutionary shot Lenin, and he never fully recovered. The Cheka immediately executed her in a parking lot. As pointed out by historians, she was nearly blind, and was likely some kind of patsy. The attempt on Lenin launched the first red terror. One of many to follow.
Lessons learned. Don’t be afraid to confront evil, with all the power you can muster. Now the Communists have established a beachhead in NYC. Trump needs to act. Get rid of Mamdani one way or another. Do to him what the Democrats tried to do to Trump. Don’t be afraid to arrest rogue judges. Use the Insurrection Act. The Democrats have launched a campaign of chaos believing that the voters will blame the party in power. Once they get back in power be prepared for the end of traditional America.
Great plan there, internet tough guy. Just arrest opponents. I can’t see how that could possibly go wrong. “Get rid” of Mamdani? How? What LAW has he broken? Same with those judges. How does the Insurrection Act give Trump the power to do anything you’re calling for?
“Once they get back in power be prepared for the end of traditional America.”
Seems like that’s what you’re calling for.
If the Bolsheviks hadn’t pulled the trigger, someone else would have.
Socialism’s seeds go at least as far back as Rousseau, a revolution was fought in his country to impose it, and like all such revolutions, it smothered itself in tyranny and was finally usurped by a strongman. As economically ignorant as Marx’s ideas were, they were overly attractive to the covetous, and were bound to be executed sooner or later.
Take for example, Castro — although the Soviet Union gave him significant aid and comfort, they didn’t turn him into a socialist — he was a socialist when he first came to their attention, and he was planning on revolution with or without a white knight to back him.
All this is to say that Bolshevism could not ever have been smothered in its cradle, because it’s an idea — like seismic activity, always just under the surface, and equally liable to pop up anywhere at a moment’s notice.
I do consider myself well read on Russian history from the Napoleonic age ( my main interest) through Stalin.
The interesting period coming up to the 200th anniversary of the Russian Guard Revolt to me is the eye opening Russian society was rotten from the ground up.
The few Czars between those 2 periods all hac a chance to change Russia but did it 1/2 way at best. By the time the Bolsheviks took over, never being the majority the actually wiped out the few better rights Russians had achieved.
As a side note, on YouTube the Russian movie The Union of Salvation, a movie if the 1825 revokt is very accurate to watch
If Mamdani lied on his citizenship application, then it should be revoked and he should be deported. Period.