The 100th anniversary of the true Russian Revolution

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Not the one that brought the Bolsheviks to power, but the sudden regime change in March of 1917. Only months before the Tsarist regime seemed to be stable enough for the Bolshevik leader Lenin to see the future revolution as a task for the next generation.

And yet, in a matter of days, the entire country, including its nobility and high-ranked officers turned against their monarch. As with the ascendance of Donald Trump that caught everyone by surprise, the abrupt end of the monarchy, the only system of government Russia had known, was predetermined by the regime's failure to change with the times.

Despite the established narrative depicting hungry peasants seeking land and the workers' struggle against oppression, supplied later by the Soviet propaganda, the Imperial Russia had a free market economy, independent judiciary and press, and was superior to what Russia is today. It had an enormous potential to become a superpower, were it not for one thing - the archaic segregation into social groups, the estates. In other words, being a peasant was not an occupation but a station in life. This made social advancement difficult, leaving a military career as the best way to improve one's station. Even the electoral votes for the Russian parliament were disproportionably distributed among the social estates, giving the peasantry, the country's overwhelming majority, the least representation,

World War I changed the perception of the traditional social order. As the militarily cadre was eventually thinned out in the trenches, the window of opportunity opened for the low classes. A literate peasant could be promoted to an officer. As that was a mass war, the changes in attitude were on a mass scale.

So, when protests erupted in the capital over food shortages, expected in wartime, the army joined in. Some see a German hand in the ensuing unrest, the same way the Germans helped fuel the Irish rebellion a year before. But in Russia the army turned against its Supreme Commander with the mutinous mob. Russian generals, many open republicans, refused to quell the unrest and demanded Tsar's abdication.

The following years demonstrated how much the restrictive social estates prevented the country from benefiting from its hidden potential - its people. And why, despite terror and hunger that always followed them, the Bolsheviks won the Civil war. There now was a way to find a social lift, change your destiny.

My paternal grandparents were born at the end of the 19th century. As Jews they could not own land, live outside certain areas, barred from certain professions. It was their social estate. But my father became a mechanical engineer, while his brother became an army officer, something that simply could not happened under the soft, but unfair monarchy.

Russian Empire fell not because it was overly oppressive or deprived. It was a rather advanced  and wealthy state. But it was an unfair state, way behind its time.

If history teaches us anything, revolutions happened because the system seems unfair. Unfortunately, the democratic republic that replaced the Tsar, did not learn this lesson, and humankind missed its chance to avoid many calamities that followed. In 6 months the republic was promptly overthrown by the ultimate demagogues and populists - the Bolsheviks. There is a reason why Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon calls himself a Leninist.

Ukraine's fate was also predetermined that year. Not having much experience in state building and administration, Ukrainian political leaders, as well as their Russian counterparts, had no time learn to properly the complicated game of politics, and soon the former empire was engulfed in a bitter civil war.

We must learn the important lessons of the real Russian revolution: as long as people are treated not as individuals but members of a social strata, there will be a cause for grievances; the sense of being treated unfairly is more important than all economic benefits combined. It's all about feelings, stupid!