Tale of Cossacks and Men #4 Notes on book

For today's entry, my research that follows is drawn from the introdution of '1917: Russia's Year of Revolution', establishing the circumstances that set the stage of the 1917 revolutions, key events for my book:

• Note: the book contains at the start a map of Petrograd in 1917, which may be key to establishing the setting effectively.
• When the author mentions the October revolution to an old Russian, the man says that wasn't a revolution. The revolution was in February. October was a coup d'eat.
• In an ideology effort to make everyone "ordinary" Lenin would order the the possessing classes, the bourgeois scum into the jobs of ditch-diggers, tram drivers or railway guards.
• What happened in 1917 laid the foundations for decades of war, privation, argument and espionage.
• While initially in the war there was a rise of patriotism behind the monarchy, although military defeat and tragic casualties quickly wore away at these initial feelings.
• Many non-Russians living in Petrograd left after the revolution, although others saw it coming.
• Within a few short years of Lenin's death, the blunt, expedient weapons of terror, mass arrest and imprisonment he had used in the battle against counter revolution were honed and polished by his successor to achieve a new historical zenith in organized cruelty.
• Today, some use the terror of Russian communism to critique the actions of the USSR, while others remain loyal and fond of old Lenin and Stalin.
• Some used the light of revolution to raise the candles of anti-Semitism, white power that saw Bolshevism as no more than a global Jewish conspiracy, seizing every Jewish participant they can find.
• While some believe under Kerensky may have in time established a democrati parliamentary system, others like Lenin referred to him as a "petty braggart" and Trostsky said: "His best speeches were merely a sumptuous pounding of water in a mortar. In 1917, the water boiled and sent up steam, and the clouds of steam provided a halo", despite his histrionics, fiery oratory, his skill as a lawyer and a penchant for dressing as a worker.
• While Lenin and Trotsky may have taken the reins, the proletarian horse was already in full gallop by the time they arrived from exile, a political situation made more complex by the backdrop of a world war and the dissolution of pristine dreams into a puddle of despair.

As shown above, it is critical to consider how the bright aspirations of the February revolution collapsed into despair, an idea that would be best analysed via a psychological-drama. Furthermore, as shown, the role of the Cossacks would be to act as the barrier between the leaders of the old Russian society and the aspirations of the people, and go on to watch as the destruction of that barrier leads to despair and communist takeover.