Bolshevik Revolution

The Bolshevik Revolution is the book’s stark example of a political upheaval that promised a more just and prosperous society but produced a new ruling elite and more repressive institutions. Rather than treating revolution as a reliable route out of extraction, the account asks whether political change spreads power broadly or merely transfers it from one narrow group to another.

A Revolution Against the Old Order

The revolution’s advertised aim was to replace the exploitative economic system of tsarist Russia with one that would bring freedom and prosperity to millions. Its inspiration lay in Marx’s vision of a system capable of producing prosperity under more humane conditions and without inequality. But the book sharply distinguishes that vision from the revolution’s actual course: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was bloody, and its early political outcome contradicted the promise of equality.

A New Elite and Repression

Lenin and the Communist Party were inspired by Marx, yet the first consequence identified in the account was the creation of a new elite: Lenin and his entourage, installed at the head of the Bolshevik Party. The new leadership purged and killed non-communists as well as other communists who might threaten its power. Rather than dismantling concentrated political authority, the revolution established a new faction in control of it.

The revolution’s aftermath deepened that reversal. The Russian Civil War followed, and Stalin’s collectivization and repeated purges brought further repression and suffering. The account says the purges may have killed as many as forty million people. It presents this later toll not as an isolated departure from the revolution’s institutional direction, but as part of the broader tragedy that followed its founding promise.

Institutions and the Reversal of the Promise

The book places the Bolshevik Revolution among political upheavals that replaced one set of extractive institutions with another, more pernicious one. Its advertised appeal to justice and efficiency did not prevent the concentration of power; the creation of a new ruling elite instead accompanied institutions that extracted resources from the population. In this analysis, abolishing or transforming an economic system does not establish inclusive institutions if political power remains concentrated.

The Russian case also forms part of a wider comparison. The account describes communism in Russia as brutal and repressive but not unique, pointing to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, China, and North Korea as other cases of dictatorship, human-rights abuses, and extractive economic arrangements. Across these systems, economic institutions, whether or not they included markets, were designed to extract resources from the population; the rejection of secure property rights often generated poverty rather than prosperity. In Russia, the communist system initially produced rapid growth, but later faltered and led to stagnation.

Revolution, Empowerment, and Historical Contingency

The Bolshevik Revolution serves as a warning in the book’s comparison of paths to inclusive institutions. Revolutions can begin amid conflict over entrenched power, but their outcomes are uncertain. The account contrasts the Bolshevik reversal with cases in which political change helped make institutions more pluralistic, emphasizing that the distinction lies in whether a broad cross-section of society is empowered. The overthrow of an old elite is not, by itself, the same as a durable redistribution of political power.

The revolution therefore anchors a central contrast: political rupture may be a starting point for institutional change, but it offers no guarantee that the resulting order will be less extractive. In the book’s account, the promises made in 1917 and the concentrated authority that followed expose the gap between revolutionary aims and institutional outcomes.