Past Present Future

What If… The Russian Revolution Hadn’t Been Bolshevik?


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Today’s episode is another big early twentieth-century counterfactual: David talks to the historian of Russia Edward Acton about how the Russian Revolution might have unfolded if the Left SRs and not the Bolsheviks had come out on top. Could Lenin have been sidelined? Might the Terror have been avoided? And what would it have meant to the wider world if revolutionary socialism had been liberated from Marxist communism?


To hear the second part of David’s conversation with Chris Clark about the fateful origins of the First World War sign up now to PPF+ and get ad-free listening and all our other bonuses too: £5 per month or £50 a year for 24 bonus episodes https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

Next time: What if… The 1919 Paris Peace Conference Had Actually Kept the Peace?


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Past Present FutureBy David Runciman

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