Red October: Difference between revisions

** Weasels: Greek smugglers on the Black Sea during the Civil War.

** Snakes: the Latvian Riflemen.

* [[Former Regime Personnel]]: Some former regime officers joined the Red side (reason could be [[My Country, Right or Wrong]], political conviction or simple luck). Most were forced into service, often with their families taken hostage as incentive. They often had to prove their devotion to the Revolution, their unity with their underlings and generally whatever the unit council (soviet) wanted them to prove. A commissar who could override the commander's orders and had to execute his commander in case of (suspected) treason didn't make things easier. This trope is more specific to stories concerning the Red Navy than to stories concerning Red Army. A Determinator old-school Captain who endures this treatment by his crew and later leads them to the victory FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF THE REVOLUTION is almost a must in such stories.

* [[Gentleman and a Scholar]]: most of the intelligentsiya during the era. Also, [[Gentleman and a Scholar]] turned [[Officer and a Gentleman]] was the "hat" of the Alexeiev's elite regiment of the White army.

* [[Historical Villain Upgrade]]:

** Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, et cetera from 1894 to 1917. His portrayal in media may be as a tyrant with blood stained hands, or as an ineffective ruler out of touch with the situation of his empire. To be fair, his regime wasn't blameless in many ways, but like often happens, the reality was more complex than simplified extremes.

** Leon Davidovich Trotsky. One of the leaders of the Great October Revolution, President of the Petrograd Soviet in October-November 1917, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs from November 1917 to March 1918. He was a major figure in the Civil War being People's Commissar for Army and Navy Affairs. But he became part of an opposition faction against Joseph Stalin in the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which was renamed the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1925. He was expelled from the party in October 1927, and then exiled in February 1929. Many crimes and conspiracies against the Soviet government were linked to him in the 1930s, true or not, and in histories of the 1917 Revolution/Civil War, his role became downplayed or erased.

*** [[Historical Hero Upgrade]]: As a result of his opposition to Stalin (combined with the fact that he, Trotsky, was a brilliant journalist and a one-man propaganda machine) Trotsky became the poster-boy for the anti-Stalinist Left who condemed the dictators atrocities and totalitarian regime. Even many non-Socialists thought that Trotsky represented the "democratic", "non-violent" Communist movement. But his behaviour in the Civil War was pretty appaling (even given how bad the other side could be) and he actually agreed with a lot more of what Stalin did than many seemed to realize, opposing him less out of any moral differences and more due to the belief that he was a front-man for an oligarchy of Bolshevik "Rightists" (and the whole "trying to kill me and my family" thing). He always favoured violent revolution and downplayed the atrocities he commited during the war, and remained unrepetant about his behaviour until the day he died. He was also not as competent a politician as he is remembered and he made a lot of foolish mistakes and tended to make enemies easily.

* [[Memetic Mutation]]: one predating the Internet! Vasili Chapayev, a Red division commander who ended up as a popular Russian [[Russian Humour|folk joke]] character.

* [[Montages]]: Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein was a pioneer of the development and use of the montage editing and montage was used prominently in some Soviet films of the 1920s.

* [[The Mutiny]]: It happens in revolutions.

* [[Officer and a Gentleman]]: a stereotypical White Guard. Except in earlier Soviet fiction, where they were portrayed as either [[Complete Monster|Complete Monsters]] or ineffectual, alcoholic and decadent.

[[Category:Dirty Communists]]

[[Category:Useful Notes/Russia]]