History

The American founding put the right to keep and bear arms in writing. Russia's revolutionary generation, from the famine of 1891–92 to the Civil War, showed what happens when a state decides the people can't be trusted with arms, bread or newspapers. This section sets those two records side by side and asks what they teach about the socialist movements active in America today.

How we write history here

Every article gives dates and links its sources. Russian dates before February 1918 are written Old Style (New Style). Where we offer opinion or draw a lesson for today, we label it as opinion.

Articles

• Russia 1917: From Bread to the Cheka: how ten months took Russia from bread-line protests to a secret police that could take away your ration card.

Planned articles (stubs, coming soon)

Founding and the Second Amendment

1. The Powder Alarm and Lexington & Concord (1774–1775): why the first shots were fired over gun powder and arms stores. stub
2. The Militia, the People, and the Debates of 1787–1791: the ratification arguments that produced the Second Amendment. stub
3. Arms in the Founding Era: flintlocks, rifles and the Girandoni air rifle that Lewis & Clark carried. stub
4. Reconstruction and the Right to Bear Arms: the Fourteenth Amendment, freedmen and the early gun-control laws aimed at them. stub
5. From the NFA (1934) to Heller (2008) to Bruen (2022): a field guide to federal gun law and the Supreme Court. stub
6. The AR-15 Before the Court (2026): Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins. stub

Russia 1889–1920

1. The Famine of 1891–92 and the Rise of the Radical Intelligentsia. stub
2. 1903: Bolsheviks and Mensheviks Split Over Who Counts as a Member. stub
3. 1905: Bloody Sunday, the October Manifesto and the First Duma. stub
4. Stolypin's Reforms (1906–1911): The Road Not Taken. stub
5. The Constituent Assembly: Russia's First Free Election and Its 13-Hour Parliament (1917–1918). stub
6. Disarming the People: The Sovnarkom Arms Decree of December 10, 1918. stub
7. War Communism and Prodrazverstka: Grain Requisitioning, 1918–1921. stub
8. Kronstadt 1921: When the Sailors Asked for Free Soviets. stub

Then and Now

1. Echoes of 1917: Promises Then, Promises Now: Bolshevik slogans set beside the platforms of modern American socialist movements, with sources on both sides. stub