On 2013-11-12, at 6:39 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> On Nov 12, 2013, at 12:49 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>>
>> The Russian revolution would have flopped without the support of the
>> military or at least a significant part of it.
>
>> In fact the Russian Revolution had virtually no support at all among the military, ie., the professional officer and sub-officer corps. The revolution had the overwhelming support of the soldiers and sailors--peasants and workers enslaved as cannon fodder by the Tsarist military. Only once the Soviet Power had been established and come to incarnate the Russian national state did some, a small minority, of officers (like General Brussilov) agree to fight in the Red Army. And many of them had so little loyalty that their families had to be held as hostages!
The disintegration of the armed forces of the regime and the wholesale defection of worker and peasant conscripts to the revolutionary army was also characteristic of the the culminating stage of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions which destroyed the old ruling class.