One of Nikolai Bukharin’s last known observations about the Bolshevik revolution, before Stalin had him killed, was that it was driven by a hatred of the people it was supposed to serve. The revolution was supposed to create a society in which all people enjoyed the fruits of their collective production. By the end of the 1920s, Stalin’s revolution from above promised to unleash mass murder, genocide, and famine.
It is a well-known feature of history that revolutions not only eat themselves, but they unleash terror on the people. There is always a point where the aspirations that fueled the revolution slam into the reality of the human condition. Since abandoning the revolutionary vision means abandoning the revolution, the revolutionaries turn on the human condition, first on each other, then on the people.
