by lpetrich » Wed 16 Jan 2019, 18:15:34
Now for the Vladimir Lenin analogy. Lenin had been a Russian revolutionary activist who fled into exile in western Europe after being exiled in Siberia for a few years. Early in 1917, he was living in Zürich, Switzerland. Russia entered World War I to help Serbia by attacking Germany and Austria-Hungary. But Germany beat Russia rather badly, and Russia's economy started to falter rather badly. Ordinary people were starving, and many soldiers deserted and mutinied. By early 1917, it seemed like a full-scale revolution. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on March 15, and he was succeeded by the Provisional Government.
Lenin wanted to join the revolution, but getting to Russia was difficult. A colleague made a deal for him to cross Germany in a sealed train. German officials were already distributing propaganda to Russian troops, and they were happy at the thought of further destabilization that a big-name revolutionary would likely cause.
So he and 31 associates departed Zürich on April 3, and they changed trains to a commandeered military train on the German border. That train was diplomatically sealed but not physically sealed. The train made its way across Germany to Sassnitz on the Baltic Sea. They then took a ferry to Sweden, went north to the Finnish border, crossed over into Finland, and eventually arrived at Finland Station in St. Petersburg / Petrograd on April 15.
He got to work, promising among other things, peace with Germany, unlike the Provisional Government keeping the war going. Late that year, he and his fellow Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government, and they soon ended up fighting their opponents in the Russian Civil War, which ended in 1921.
But they did not forget about peace with Germany, and on March 3, 1918, they signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Germany and Austria-Hungary got the westernmost parts of the Russian Empire -- the most industrialized parts. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Russian parts of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.
To Germany's leaders, it was a big triumph, I'm sure, since it was a lot more than what they might reasonably have expected when they sent Lenin in a sealed train through their territory.
It seems to me that Vladimir Putin had supported Donald Trump for much the same reason, with a similar hoped-for outcome.