The Czar was better. The revolution happened only because Russia fared badly in the war.
This is a massive, massive oversimplification and ignores a lot of basic truths. First of all, as has been described, most Russians were very badly off, especially compared with the rest of Europe. First of all - and most notable - was the extreme poverty most people lived in. Second of all was the lack of education, since by 1900, only about 5% of the population were literate. Health care was virtually non-existent and relied on traditional remedies and religion for cures. Third, Russia only became a partial democracy in 1905, prior to which it had been a 100% autocracy. Peasants had
no rights whatsoever. In fact, until 1861, they had been effectively slaves, serfdom being indentured servitude. Read
"The Russian Revolution: A People's Tragedy" by Orlando Figes. Most people think that Russia was a happy place until a bunch of communists came along and shot everyone. It wasn't exactly "The Lion King".
In one Gulag memoirs there was a story how one man was put in there, only because he had uttered once that shoes had been cheaper before the revolution.
So? That was probably 20 years later. If you read a lot of the replies on the first page of this thread you will realise that where such levels of oppression are the norm, a violent revolution is almost an inevitability. When oppressed people rise up, they are very often worse then those who preceded them. That is not a matter of what their political philosophy is, It's an inevitable consequence of human nature. In any event, it's not relevant to this movie.
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