All kinds of social cataclysms, famine, civil war, foreign intervention and other misfortunes - this is what fell to the lot of the masses. And yet they dreamed that all troubles were about to end and the triumph of complete equality and communism would come.
History is written by winners
The memory of the civil war for the modern generation is the stories of witnesses who, due to their age, are almost gone, these are monuments to the Red Army and films like "The Elusive Avengers". However, the history of Soviet power in the form in which students studied it at school was written by red ancestors, although the modern generation is the descendants of both opposing forces. Of course, the Red Army men are worthy of memory, but we know too little about their opponents. But before 1917, many red army commanders were also military - officers of tsarist Russia. For ideological reasons, the fact that yesterday's classmates of the red commanders fought on the side of the White Guards was hushed up. Although under the command of both those and others were the same soldiers and sailors, who only yesterday stood behind the plow. And everyone believed that the truth was on their side.
Why the Soviets became the main force
To be honest, modern citizens of the country do not even know everything about their red ancestors. Has anyone heard of the Finnish Red Guards or the Red Chinese who defended the Murmansk Railway? Unlikely. Yes, and little can be said about the social composition of the White Guards, if you only remember the common stories about kulaks and world-eating shopkeepers. Meanwhile, these "combat shopkeepers", just like the Red Army soldiers, performed miracles of heroism.
As for the kulaks, there are too many ideological lies. Wealthy peasants did not become inherited, but thanks to hard work. And the fact that most of the "kulaks" had hired workers does not always mean exploitation. Often, hired workers were almost family members - they ate with the owners at the same table and had quite friendly relations. Naturally, such peasants were not disposed to the Soviet regime - with its surplus appropriation, nationalization of bank deposits and the firing ban on any trade "from hand".
But the Soviet government did not rely on wealthy peasants who would provide the newly emerging state with a stable economic future, but on the so-called "kombeds" - committees of the poor, consisting of aggressive lumpen who did not want to work hard. The "kulaks" were forced to either join the white army, or give up all the property they had acquired by back-breaking labor.
And what about the urban population? The factories where the working class was "oppressed" on a massive scale were far from always the way they were portrayed in Soviet history textbooks. Many factory owners provided the diligent workers with not only housing and food, but also pensions and medical care. And the result was the same as in the countryside - the "expropriation of the expropriators" and the crowd of aggressive workers who were not satisfied that some of them had more than others. Despite a number of negative aspects, one cannot but agree that the Soviet government united people with the most powerful ideology, and this is its main phenomenon.
