If there were only a few more Ruskies

So here's a new segment.

Grand historical question time.

So all you history buffs out there, let me give you a thinker...

Now Russia in the first World War lost more people than any other combatant. Moreover, many of these were Russia's best and brightest. Some historians (including I believe, Orlando Figes) have cited Russia's lack of a strong middle position party between the militarist White Russians and the Bolshevik-led Reds in the Russian Civil War as the cause of the Bolshevik victory. Many of those historians have assumed this was then due to Russia's incomplete industrial revolution (often using a progress/stages version of history which I'm always suspicious of).

But what if there was the potential for a middle position party? What if there were dynamic youths who could have led a new faction of Russians who could overcome the Reds and charm/defeat the Whites... that is if they hadn't been killed in the early years of the first World War.

The early years of the first World War gutted the Russian officer class, and the military was often the best route for advancement for upwardly-mobile Russians. If it hadn't been for all that slaughter, perhaps the even greater slaughters to follow might have been avoided.

If the idea is true, it adds another layer of tragedy to early 20th century history, but perhaps it also gives us a new way to interpret the Russian Revolution. And then the lessons derived from the birth of the Soviet Union might need some rethinking as well...

Perhaps...
Perhaps...
Perhaps...