Bears and Roses

Russia's Industrial Revolution began with difficulty under the autocratic rule of the tsars and the system of serfdom.

Marx said, "The hand mill gives you society with the feudal lord at its head; the steam mill gives you society with the industrial capitalist at its head."

The means of production were the fundamental marker of productive capacity. In light industry, large factories using machine production were far cheaper and more efficient than handicraft workshops. The Russian Empire's emancipation of the serfs had been a measure forced upon it as its competitors developed ever more rapidly after the Industrial Revolution.

But even after industrialization, the Russian Empire's Industrial Revolution could not compare with Western Europe or America in either depth or breadth.

Lenin once gave this speech at the International Mass Meeting in Bern:

The European war had been raging wildly for over a year and a half. With every passing month, every passing day, the working masses saw more clearly that the Zimmerwald Manifesto spoke the truth: phrases like "defending the fatherland" were nothing more than capitalist lies. Day by day, people saw more clearly that this was a war of capitalists, of great robbers. All they fought over was who would receive more loot, plunder more countries, and ravage and enslave more nations.

World War I had no justice whatsoever. It was the explosive culmination of accumulated contradictions among imperialists caused by the unfair division of interests. The so-called defense of home and country was also a lie.

They merely pretended to be patriotic, blending in among those who truly loved their country. In order to protect their own freedom of speech, America's elite class even linked patriotism with Hitler and the Nazis. Even burning the Stars and Stripes was not considered a crime. Those selfish to the extreme