Science Fiction

The triumph of the world's first socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 may have seemed improbable, but the effort to build and sustain that revolution raised the odds to nearly impossible. To realize a socialist democracy, material and cultural conditions had to be lifted to an ambitious new level — in a country that was backward, isolated, and devastated by World War I and then by counterrevolution. More than 70 percent of the population could not read. Soviet industry stood at one-fifth of its prewar capacity, food reserves were gone, and the railway system was destroyed. Famine forced people into the countryside searching for food. By 1921, the population of Moscow was cut in half, and that of Petrograd reduced by 67 percent. Typhoid and other epidemics raged.
The Soviets looked west for help, expecting that the horrors of the imperialist war would spark revolutions and the creation of sister workers states in Europe. These states could then provide the USSR with support, trade, and technological exchange. But, fatefully, these revolts did not immediately occur. Seeking breathing space, V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks withdrew the Soviet republic from WWI, signing a separate peace with Germany in March of 1918.
But by early summer, before the Soviets could begin to rebuild their shattered homeland, they were hit with counterrevolution by the "Whites," a hodgepodge of Russian capitalists, liberals, and reactionaries, led by former Tsarist generals.Abetting the Whites were troops from 21 foreign countries. Although still in the midst of WWI, the Allied Powers attacked the new republic on more than a dozen fronts — even joining with their enemy, Germany, to do so!
Appointed War Commissar, Leon Trotsky shaped the fragments of the Russian military into the Red Army, a fierce, disciplined model of effectiveness. After three years of brutal combat, the foreign armies and Whites were finally defeated. Beyond the massive war casualties, the civilian cost was... [continues]

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