In Q 16, there are quite a lot correct answers besides the White Army such as Czechoslovakia, UK, France, USA, Japan ... you know ... there are reasons why the Soviets distrusted them since 1919...
Actually no. Kulaks were basically families that owned large amounts of rural land and were the heads of farms. They were peasants, but they also were usually wealthy landlords at the same time. The persecution was mainly based on the communists wanting to restructure the economy and in the process collectivize agriculture. Of course this would've meant that Kulaks would loose the operation that made them so wealthy and become just another average worker, so they resisted this heavily, which eventually lead to armed conflict between kulaks and communists.
At the time that the Bolshevik faction split the party was known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The answer to number 3 implies this should be the answer to number 2. I tried several versions of the RSDLP, and got the answer to number 2 wrong before trying Communist. It was not the Communist party until 1918.
He may not have been as evil as Stalin but he was still quite an evil man. He even had children murdered who opposed his views. Burn in hell, you'll get yours. What comes around goes around. Nobody is an exception to that.
Was liking this comment for the first half then the 2nd half turned into empty and untrue platitudes. Plenty of men who do evil things escape justice. And having visiting his corpse in Moscow I have it on good authority that it's not presently on fire.
Read gzx5's comment 2 comments above yours. Lenin was certainly not as evil as Nicholas II or Joseph Stalin, but was a dictator all the same. He shared political power with no one during his reign. He only had people assisting him and carrying out his orders, like Stalin, Trotsky, and Kalinin. He crushed rival factions and murdered several people. By today's definitions, he was certainly a dictator maybe comparable to Ayatollah Khomeini or Nicolas Maduro.
Well, he pretty much sucked in every way. He was an autocrat almost as much as Lenin was, he lost war after war, allowed Sakhalin to be annexed by Japan, created famines while the peasants starved, did nothing to alleviate the poverty of the serfs, shot protesters dead on Bloody Sunday (1905), etc.
I suppose evil is a bit of an overstatement, but Nicholas was not a good leader whatsoever. Lenin, although as brutal as Nicholas, was a good leader.
From what I've read about him, he seemed like a person who always genuinely tried to do the right thing but just wasn't able to. I wouldn't classify him as evil. But most of what I know is from a single book.
Yeah, I'll admit I probably know less about this than you and Quizmaster probably do, but from what I can tell, Nicholas's fault was less that he was evil and more that he was incompetent. For example, his coronation was a mess. That being said, the Wikipedia article states, "The Tsar wanted to stay in his chambers and pray for the lives lost, but his uncles believed that his absence at the ball would strain relations with France... Thus Nicholas attended the party; as a result the mourning populace saw Nicholas as frivolous and uncaring."
So I don't think Nicholas had bad intentions--he just had no clue what he was doing and allowed himself to be pushed around by bad people. Lenin I would say is the opposite--a bad person who was shrewd enough to make good political decisions. (Though as you said, Stalin was way worse.)
not that anyone needs to hear my 2 cents, but my view of the last tsars is also one more of incompetence than evil. Not that they were especially great people, or good leaders, or that their obscene wealth or retaining a monarchy in any country especially one as poor as Russia could ever be justified, but they were better than Lenin, Stalin, and company. Less popular, arguably. Though that's hard to gage as if you made known your dislike of the latter you were more likely to be shot than polled for your opinion.
I don't think you should call Lenin a dictator, because the soviet leadership structure, although very powerful, was built very differently from the images of absolute monarchy, military dictatorship, fascism or bonapartism that people typically have in mind when thinking of dictatorships and it was more of a "politics is open to participate for all, but the people elected into the higher councils have lots of power" situation.
I also have some 5 cents to share about Lenin supposedly wanting Trotsky as his successor because this is precisely just that: supposedly. There's no actually good evidence on that and while I'm fairly sure Lenin would've been very disappointed to see which direction his country took under Stalin because many of the rights for women, LGBT and ethnic minorities introduced under Lenin were reversed, I'm very sure Trotskys vision for the USSR deviated from Lenin's one quite a bit as well.
Lenin is definitely not in the same class as the other dictators in this quiz series. Its like having a quiz series on the greatest athletes of all time and including your favorite athlete even though that athlete never did anything of note.
True. Lenin didn't live long enough to get Stalin/Hitler/Mao level stats. 200,000 political enemies executed? Child's play.
But you're making a false assumption about why this quiz series exists. It's not a list of the worst dictators. It's a list of the dictators who make the best quizzes.
I hope you realized you just proved my point, nothing in my statement was praising Lenin. I was simply stating he's not on the level of the other Tyrants in this series, which you agree with.
I also love how there is a series on dictators and you don't include Julius Caesar, who was the first official dictator in history and plenty famous and interesting. Or very little Western leaders who across history built empires based off of colonial exploitation, slavery, and murder.
I don't believe I am making false assumptions, I am simply stating that there are better candidates to feature on a dictator series of quizzes than Lenin.
Buddy, not only is this a ridiculously out-of-touch statement about the nature of human politics since prehistory, but Caesar was far from the first dictator in the city of Rome, much less all of history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator
He gave rights to minorities whose leaders agreed with him. Others were gassed, executed, or sent to the camps. I think that outweighs the rights he granted women or the rights you think he granted the LGBT community.
Making him out to be some progressive icon is not good for progressivism.
The excuses being made here for Nicholas II, are honestly pathetic. Sure he was a weak ruler manipulated by Russian aristocracy but he was still ruler for over 20 years, and by historical standards if your dynasty ends because you are ineffective for well over 20 years you are garbage. Under his reign he affirmed a strong commitment to autocracy, created the Duma as a fake legislature and gave it no power, presided over famines that forced the peasants in the countryside to commit to cannibalism to survive, got absolutely destroyed in the Russo Japanese war and then showed when WWI rolled around he learned nothing and even attempted to lead from the front with disastrous results. He also was never a champion of the people, and violent reprisals against citizens were common under his watch. If you cant figure out a better way to govern your state after being in power for 20+ years, your poor advisors are not the problem you are.
Henry: "Bolshevik."
Klinger: "No, honest."
I suppose evil is a bit of an overstatement, but Nicholas was not a good leader whatsoever. Lenin, although as brutal as Nicholas, was a good leader.
That said, this is just my personal opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_and_Alexandra_(book)
Also just want to note that serfdom had been abolished by his grandfather in 1861.
But, yes, you are right about his grandfather abolishing it. I guess both Lenin and Nicholas stank in their own way.
So I don't think Nicholas had bad intentions--he just had no clue what he was doing and allowed himself to be pushed around by bad people. Lenin I would say is the opposite--a bad person who was shrewd enough to make good political decisions. (Though as you said, Stalin was way worse.)
Georgia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Moldova
Depending on how the question is interpreted, possibly also:
Khiva
Bukhara
Crimea
Don Republic
Kuban Republic
Karelia
North Ingria
Tungus Republic
Transcaucasia (Georgia+Armenia+Azerbaijan)
Caucasian Empire (Chechnya)
Caucasian Republic
Turkestan
I don't think you should call Lenin a dictator, because the soviet leadership structure, although very powerful, was built very differently from the images of absolute monarchy, military dictatorship, fascism or bonapartism that people typically have in mind when thinking of dictatorships and it was more of a "politics is open to participate for all, but the people elected into the higher councils have lots of power" situation.
I also have some 5 cents to share about Lenin supposedly wanting Trotsky as his successor because this is precisely just that: supposedly. There's no actually good evidence on that and while I'm fairly sure Lenin would've been very disappointed to see which direction his country took under Stalin because many of the rights for women, LGBT and ethnic minorities introduced under Lenin were reversed, I'm very sure Trotskys vision for the USSR deviated from Lenin's one quite a bit as well.
But you're making a false assumption about why this quiz series exists. It's not a list of the worst dictators. It's a list of the dictators who make the best quizzes.
I also love how there is a series on dictators and you don't include Julius Caesar, who was the first official dictator in history and plenty famous and interesting. Or very little Western leaders who across history built empires based off of colonial exploitation, slavery, and murder.
I don't believe I am making false assumptions, I am simply stating that there are better candidates to feature on a dictator series of quizzes than Lenin.
Buddy, not only is this a ridiculously out-of-touch statement about the nature of human politics since prehistory, but Caesar was far from the first dictator in the city of Rome, much less all of history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator
P.S. : "I don't believe I am making false assumptions" + "Julius Caesar, who was the first official dictator in history" = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Making him out to be some progressive icon is not good for progressivism.