Bolshevik Revolution
On October 25, 1917 by the Julian calendar (November 7 Gregorian), Lenin's Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd and overthrew the Provisional Government. In the November Constituent Assembly elections, the Bolsheviks won roughly 24 percent of the vote, trailing the Socialist Revolutionaries at 40 percent. When the Assembly convened on January 18, 1918, Lenin dissolved it after a single day. Their claim to legitimacy rested not on popular election but on historical inevitability: they were the vanguard of the proletariat, and ideological correctness outweighed vote totals. That logic defined communist regimes for the next 74 years.
The Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly after a single day when they realized they'd lost it to rival socialists. The logic — that ideological correctness trumps vote totals — defined communist regimes for the next 74 years.
05 · Ideology & State
The 20th century proposed a different answer: legitimacy flows from alignment with the correct ideology. Parties — Bolshevik, Fascist, single-party democratic — claimed to represent 'the people' or 'history itself,' often without asking. It was a century-long, bloody test of what happens when consent is asserted instead of counted.
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