That is basically my position, although I haven't brought it up in this thread, because I'm simply not interested in a comparative study of the PG and Bolsheviks. Such a study brings in other issues/problems (like the debate over what democracy can be) which would be best left to another thread. What we've simply been talking about (or at least, I've been talking about and you've been trying desperately hard to AVOID considering) is the non-democracy of the PG.
I am not trying to avoid the non-democracy of the PG, because democracy does not apply to it.
Generally we use democracy in three senses:
a) Athenian direct democracy(which applies to nobody)
b) Represenational democracy(which applies to many)
c) "Democracy" as in a country is more democratic than the other, or a government is more democratic than the other, and in the "democratic", we sum up a vague idea, of how the processes function in our subjective idealistic worlds, and we can genrally agree that less or more democratic applies in this vague sense, when there is freedom of speech, when there is freedom to vote and so on, and the Bolshevics and their cheka, get 0 marks, or better -(minus) marks.
a), b) and neither
c) apply to a provisional government, because it is neither elected, nor if elections take place is she able to be elected, because she is not a party. Hence your statement that it was not democratic is simply mundane, it serves no purpose other than to compare them with the Bolshevics, who
were a party.
In contrast a), b) and c) apply to the Bolshevics who were a political party.
Huh? Do I have to explain English to you now? As I stated, the historical revisionism that Russia was well on the path to democracy without the Bolsheviks is simply untrue - that is, to paraphrase for those that can't read properly - the historical revisionism that, if it weren't for the Bolsheviks, Russia would have become democratic is simply untrue. This says nothing about whether Russia was democratic under the Bolsheviks (although, if anything, implies it wasn't). Happy with my English lesson?
The statement is very true, and not untrue. And to understand why this is true, you need to study deeply Aristotles cycles.
This is a very hard question and requires a lot of analysis, which frankly am not up for analysing.
But we can establish a few generally true axioms:
A politeia goes through certain stages, cycles, democracy degenarates into tyrrany, and oligarchy degenerates into monarcy. Monarchy generates oligarchy, which generates timocracy which generates democracy, which in turn degenerates into tyrrany. In between these stages there is always a provisional government acting as the torch intermediary, which does not fall under any vague ideas of democracy. The next stage that will rule falls under scrutiny not the the torch intermediary. And in fact only Bolshevic apologists would in fact dare to argue such illogical clap-trap.
To go from a mixed monarchy/oligarchy as Russia did into democracy is simply impossible if you first do not go into timocracy(value based democracy), the Bolshevics simply stopped this process, and reverted back to monarchy/tyranny, and the worst kind of authoritarian tyrrany, when they finally left(?), Russia evolved into a timocracy, a vague democracy where people vote oligarchs, which this should have happened 100 years ago.
So, one can say that, the Bolshevics are responsible directly for the degenaration of the Russian politik evolution, which in an ideal world after X time of years eventually makes it into democracy, or in a degenarated form of it, like the timocratic representational one, which by all means is better(read: more "democratic") than Stalinism, or autocracy.
Why you want to talk about Cartesian axes when you can't even understand basic sentences is beyond me. Presumably you think that somehow overcomplicating the issue is the only way you can fail to see the bleeding obvious - ie. that a government that isn't democratically constituted, that makes anti-democratic decisions and stops democratic elections behind held is... surprise, surprise... NOT DEMOCRATIC.
The only person in here who does not understand simple english, is yourself, and because your argument is based on loyalty instead of logic, whatever you say as already illustrated to argue such illogical clap-trap shall be false, because in the end logic overcomes loyalty. Now, our discussion has already taken 4 pages, i have explained it to you very simply, and you still stick to your guns, when in fact you fail to see that the only reason you mention this argument is in order to put the pg in an imagined cartesian axis with the Bolshevics, which for all the reasons mentioned is simply impossible, it is error in logic, for loyalty propaganda purposes alone because you do not compare a political party with another, you compare a political party, with a
provisional government, which is fallacious as illustrated and explained in very proper english. You claim that you do not want to compare, you only want to analyze the "democracy" of the pg, and i repeat, the analysis of the "democracy" of the pg is mundane because it was
PROVISIONAL, your insistence serves one purpose alone, to become able to put it in analysis and hence on the same footing as the Bolshevics for imagined comparative analysis in pop appearances.
If sincerely you want to analyze something, analyze the "democracy"(=that is the aggregate freedoms enjoyed by the average Russian, after you define these freedoms first, which should be relatively applicable to the system) of the Czars, and the "democracy"(same as above) of the Bolshevics, in an aggregate domain, as in the totality and overall "democracy" of the Czarist governments against the totality of the Bolshevic government. In other words you are unable to eclect one periodic Czarist governmental stage and eclect another periodic Bolshevic stage, and compare what you eclect.But the totality of the periods together in average terms for the average Russian.
EN EL ED EM ON
...take your common sense with you, and leave your prejudices behind...