It seems to need stating each time, both the guys were terrible.
Just like basically everyone else at the time.
I may be missing your point but you don’t give any context to those sources.
Also, you’re saying “100 years earlier” as if that’s a long timespan in history. I know, the USA is not much older than that, but in Europe, 100 years is nothing.
And considering that ~40 years after the last Russian pogroms there was this thing called “the Holocaust”, I’m not really convinced that antisemitism was a thing of the past in Western Europe either.
The cited persecution of Catholics was and is still undoubtably, but it things happening around the turn of the 20th century in Britain really weren’t of the same nature as what was happening in Russia, not at all. British weren’t raping and killing Catholics in massive waves of concerted violence with state involvement and approval and that’s exactly what was happening in Russia around that time. 100 years is relatively short time but I definitely argue that a lot has changed and the level of violence is declining. Pinker has some good article on the subject of violence but which notably don’t say anything about violence toward small groups, though say a lot about the larger picture.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/steven-pinker-thi...
https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.htm...
> Just like basically everyone else at the time.
Does this really matter? I mean, one probably should understand racism and anti-Semitism in the context of their times, but that doesn't excuse them; a racist and anti-Semite is a horrible leader even if surrounded by people with those same horrible qualities.
EDIT: Jeez, I hope the downvotes are because people find this off-topic or something, rather than because they disagree with the sentiment.
Would you find it fair if people of the future spat on your grave, and refer to you with the utmost contempt, because you were a meat eater?
"He was a horrible, disgusting meat-eater! He deserved to die!"
Half the people in this thread are ripping on Lenin because of the things he did, even though at the time they were mostly "lawful" since he wrote the law.
We absolutely should disgrace the horrible things people did in the past, so that to not do them over again.
vs
"he was a disgusting racist antisemite! those bolsheviks sent him where he belongs! shooting and stabbing the whole family to death, hell yeah xDDDDD"
Possibly, if that's the consensus of current mores, but I didn't say that; I said that a racist and an anti-Semite is a horrible leader.
> He deserved to die!
No, I definitely didn't say that. In fact, lostlogin explicitly disclaimed this position (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17556982):
> This doesn’t justify what happened to him, but certainly helps explain it.
(emphasis mine). There are plenty of horrible people out there, but, most (and possibly all) of the time, wishing death on them is equally horrible.
If you don't like the estimate of 85 and 100 million people killed under communism (other Russian leaders) according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_deaths_in_the_Soviet... then please offer a counter offer more in line with your assertion. Whatever please stop offering off-the-cuff unsubstantiated views. They have zero value for others.
A good source is the Montefiore book on the Romanovs and is in my comments here. It’s worth reading.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/books/review/the-romanovs...