What on Earth makes you believe that everyone hated Stalin?

Flaw: a poll now can be greatly colored by nostalgia for stability and services such as they were; it's not inconsistent with everyone hating Stalin then.

Remembering self isn't the same as the experiencing self.

True, also the polled aren't necessarily the people who were alive during the man's reign.

Aside: I look forward to eventually receiving comment replies to things I wrote decades ago, written by people who haven't been born yet. I didn't realize I'd been reading this blog since 2011

You're right, I totally made that up. I know Stalin purged people from all classes of society including his own chief lieutenants, which made me think that he was unlikely to have a loyal military class, but that could just have been his own paranoia.

Stalin is much like the leaders of North Korea: they should be immensely unpopular because they're repressive, destructive, and batshit insane. But they have popularity in their own countries because they successfully cultivated a Cult Of Personality, until alot of the people really believed the bullshit being peddled to them by Beloved Leader.

It probably helps that Stalin "won" World War II.

Also, if you had to name the Top 5 greatest Russian leaders in history, who would you name? I don't know if Russia has had 5 great leaders. Off the top of my head Peter, Catherine, and Gorbachev are about the only Russian leaders I would consider great - and I'm not sure Gorby is actually popular in Russia.

> and I'm not sure Gorby is actually popular in Russia.

Very unpopular.

There's an old joke about two Red Army soldier stationed in a watchtower over an unpopulated stretch of border country.

One guard looks out over the barren landscape, seeing no signs of any other humans between them and the border. He turns to the other soldier and asks, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

The other soldier considers for a second, then replies, "Yes, comrade, I think I am."

"Then it is my duty to arrest you."

It's occurred to me that revolutions and especially coups often operate as Keynesian Beauty Contests, where power nexuses outside the initial conflict tend to support the side they expect to win regardless of who they want to win, and successful revolutions and coups operate with an initial goal of signaling that they're likely to win, thus changing the Schelling point from supporting the old regime to supporting the rebels.

For example, if the UN decreed January 1st of every new decade to be Official Worldwide Hold A Rebellion Against Your Dictator Day, and everyone agreed to this, then I expect many of the revolutions started on January 1st of new decades would be successful, since everyone knows that's when everyone else will be revolting.

I think this might be why many serious rebellions seem to occur either immediately after a major news event or on a significant anniversary or major holiday, as these are the major natural Schelling points.

While not a rebellion by any means, the Tea Party movement has followed this pattern as well, with the major rallies generally scheduled on April 15 and July 4, these being the natural Schelling points for anti-tax sentiment and patriotic nostalgia for the early US. The movement initially started using the anniversary of the 1773 Boston Tea Party, but that's fallen behind since that's not a well-known enough date.

You neglect to put weapons (and other power multipliers) into the equation.

But are weapons power multipliers in this case? Modern militaries could wipe out whole populations, never mind a few thousand protesters, but they do not. The Egyptian military has stated that they consider the protests legitimate, but even if they did not, what are they going to do?

In Egypt`s case, it seems the military is part of the rebellion. If they were truly supporting Mubarak, protesters majority wouldn`t matter - because of the weapons.

Shooting civilian protesters with guns doesn't win wars since the 19th century. Read about the black & tans sometime.

You could maybe swing it in North Korea, no way in Egypt.

This is a comment on style:

"Everyone knew that ey, personally, hated Stalin. But if he were to ask eir neighbor whether the neighbor also hated Stalin, then the neighbor might report him to the secret police for asking suspicious questions..."

I assume all bolded pronouns have the same referent. This is one reason why I am against invented "gender-neutral" pronouns.

/end{pretensiouslinguist}

The spelling faux pas is my favorite part of my reply, I should mention.

agreed

wasn't it "ze" rather?

Yeah, I try to use gender-neutral, but it's very much a "consciously have to remember this" thing and I usually fail miserably.

Only Harvey could write a comment to a post about revolution, game theory, and democracy that has nothing to do with revolution, game theory, or democracy.

I think the Egyptian revolution was so successful because the previous Tunisian revolution had just succeeded. That meant everyone in Egypt to some degree expected to have a successful revolution , which meant they were more willing to start a revolution, which means it is more likely to succeed.

I don't see why the morale of revolutionaries should be any different than other morale. Success breeds success; failure breeds failure. Applies to sports teams and armies too.

I wonder if these rebellions will encourage yet another Iranian rebellion? They seem better organized than the protestors in Tunsia, Eygpt, or Yemen but are also facing an Islamist regime (and they're Persia, which seems to have a cultural mindset very different from Arab and North African cultures). Maybe they're waiting to see if Eygpt succeeds since their rebellions thus far don't seem to have accomplished much.

if the UN decreed January 1st of every new decade to be Official Worldwide Hold A Rebellion Against Your Dictator Day

Except I don't think the UN is allowed to encourage rebellion. They can criticize, condemn, embargo, and sanction against a country. But I'd don't think the UN has ever issued a statement suggesting any group should rebel against it's authority. Then again, that may be a UN SOP issue or it might simply be what happens when the USSR and China are part of the Security Council.

It will be a different world when Russia and China change their worldview as it would seem to drastically affect UN Security Council decisions. China is obviously still a repressive authoritarian regime. Even though Russia is not the USSR, nominally democratic instead of communist, and not a superpower but it still seems to behave in many ways like it did during the Cold War: with paranoia about the US and the West and a reluctance to oppose authoritarian regimes. Or as my Foreign Policy professor would put it: they are very driven by realism not idealism.