Had Bolsheviks Not Seized Power, Russia Would have Been Reduced to the Size of Muscovy Shortly After October 1917, Shirokorad Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 7 – A major reason Russian patriots should be glad that the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917 is that they prevented their country from being reduced to the size of Muscovy, something that would certainly have happened, Aleksandr Shirokorad argues on the anniversary of the Bolshevik coup d’etat.

            Indeed, the Russian military commentator says, “without the Bolsheviks, the Russian sate in the best case would have been transformed into the Muscovite principality with borders of the 15^th century;” and “whether one likes it or not, only the Bolsheviks could hold the Power in the borders of 1917” (svpressa.ru/post/article/539737).

            At a time when people from many regions and republics are talking about independence for themselves and reducing the state centered on Moscow to that of Muscovy alone, what Shirokorad says is important. The center would not have held the rest of the country together had anyone but the Bolsheviks taken power.

            Instead, it would have likely fallen apart into many pieces, even if the largest one was a predominantly ethnic Russian core without significant access to the seas or control over much of what Russians today think of as their historically determined state extending from the Baltic to the Pacific and from the Arctic to the south.

            For a discussion of how a future disintegration of Russia might occur and why it could be limited by a Bolshevik-type strategy in Moscow, see my discussion of this issue a year ago at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/11/future-disintegration-of-russian-state.html.