An excerpt from the book

[Sputnik 1]

On the Arrest of the Tsar under the Kerensky regime...

"On March 7 in Moscow, Kerensky declaimed: "Nicholas II is in my hands. I will never be the Marat of the Russian revolution. Nicholas II is to go under my personal supervision to England. . . ." Ladies threw flowers; students applauded. But the depths bestirred themselves. Not one serious revolution yet-not one that had something to lose-has let the deposed monarch escape over the border. From the workers and soldiers came continuous demands: arrest the Romanovs. The Executive Committee sensed the tact that there could be no joking here. It was decided that the Soviet must take into its own hands the question of the Romanovs: the government was thus openly proclaimed undeserving of confidence. The Executive Committee gave an order to all railroads not to let Romanov through. That was why the czar’s train got lost in the tracks. One of the members of the Executive Committee, the worker Gvosdev, a right Menshevik, was commissioned to arrest Nicholas. Kerensky was disavowed-and along with him the government. But instead of resigning it submitted in silence. On March 9 Cheidze reported to the Executive Committee that the government had "renounced" the thought of sending Nicholas to England. The czar’s family was put under arrest in the Winter Palace."

I am posting this because i think it is an extremely insightful paragraph. Firstly, Trotsky points out that no serious revolution has ever let the deposed heads of state free.

Secondly the Trotsky says that the workers called for the arrest of the Romanovs. The tsar and his family in modern American bourgeois culture/history books/movies, etc are portrayed as innocent victims of an "insane group of revolutionaries". These people were tyrants and totally opposed to the interests of the majority of he nation ie workers an peasants.

Anyway, I feel akward talking about the Russian Revolution on the most blatantly obvious American Imperialist war since 1898, but I had some free time and one must get away from the constant media bombardment...

JF

[kinetikos]

Of this understanding Kerensky had not a trace. Lifted up by the trustful masses, he was completely alien to them, did not understand, and was not the least interested in, the question of how the revolution looked to them and what inferences they were drawing from it. The masses expected bold action from him, but he demanded from the masses that they should not interfere with his magnanimity and eloquence. Once when Kerensky was paying a theatrical visit to the arrested family of the tzar, the soldiers on duty around the palace said to their commandant: "We sleep on boards, we have bad food, but Nicholashka even after he is arrested has meat to throw in the pail.” Those were not "magnanimous" words, but they expressed what the soldiers were feeling.

Yeah the Romanovs were "imprisoned"...  with...

"6 chambermaids, 2 valets, 10 footmen, 3 cooks, 4 assistant cooks, a clerk, a nurse, a doctor, a butler, a wine-steward, and 2 pet spaniels. I'm sure anyone who's been to Wormwood Scrubs would recognize it." as Mark Steel put it. He doesn't even mention the fact that the "prisoners" under Kerensky had chests full of jewels and a flow of money for "expenses"... in their "prison".