anewaccount2021

All of the Bolsheviks were well-read. Even their token thug, Stalin, was probably reading political theory at what we would describe as a doctoral level. While Lenin did not respect Stalin as an intellectual peer, we do know that he spent a great deal of time pouring over dense political tomes. No TV, radio, internet...people read books to entertain themselves.

But, to put a fine point on it, the Russian Revolution happened without Lenin or Trotsky. The Bolsheviks overthrew the February Revolution in a coup.

This is what I would expect a technocratic forum like HN to suggest. America's most poverty stricken regions have had public education for nearly a century with almost no meaningful improvement in prospects. Tell me how rural poverty in West Viriginia is reduced by giving people humanities degrees. Better educated voters? Who cares, the poor have no representation of merit anyway; their choices are to vote for one party who ignores them or the other that ignores them.