25.09.2025, Moscow.
When one abandons discussion and resorts to terror against the opponents, that usually leads to civil war, said philosopher, political scientist, and leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan on September 19 on the Conversation with a Sage program on the Zvezda radio channel.
Commenting on the situation with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a youth activist who supported US President Donald Trump, the political scientist gave several examples where the shift from polemics to political assassinations led to civil war.
“What is the Socialist Revolutionary Party’s terror, the Left SRs? Well, that’s it, they [the Left SRs] decided, the only argument is a bullet. So, a bullet [the Bolsheviks replied], then the answer is the Cheka [Soviet secret police]. How did the civil war in Russia begin? Or anywhere else, it’s a universal thing. We have forgotten history,” Sergey Kurginyan said.
He also recalled that the revolutionary terror of the Jacobins began when French noblewoman Charlotte Corday killed Jean Paul Marat, one of the leaders of the Jacobins during the French Revolution. “And why did they kill him? They should rally the masses and prove they were right. But they could not. They were historically bankrupt. And they compensated for their historical bankruptcy with a dagger, so to speak,” the analyst explained.
“But something like this happened earlier, too. And Caesar? Brutus? Who is the real democrat here? Do you really think that it was Brutus? And what does he do? He arranges something that ends up with thirty wounds on Caesar, or however many. Is this how we build democracy—with a dagger?” the political scientist remarked.
According to him, Charlotte Corday simply repeated this practice in France. “And then the Jacobin terror begins, because they realize their leaders are being killed. So they will kill in return,” Kurginyan added.
The political scientist also recalled the perestroika-era version that Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin allegedly initiated the murder of Sergey Mironovich Kirov, first secretary of the Leningrad party committees, in 1934 and supposedly used it to unleash political repression. “For what reason would he have killed Kirov?” the analyst stressed, calling this version absurd.
“Kirov came to him before the congress and said: ‘Joseph Vissarionovich, I believe you are the true leader, but these and those people come to me and tell me I should become the leader, but I don’t want to.’ What did Stalin say? ‘You saved the party,’” Kurginyan described the situation.
According to him, at the next party congress session, those Kirov had named were already gone. “So how exactly was Kirov in Stalin’s way after that? How?” he asked.
Kurginyan emphasized that Kirov was standing in the way of those he had exposed. At the same time, the political scientist explained why Stalin then began a “purge of the ranks.” “Because he knew that this rifle with a telescopic sight was aimed at him, at his family, at anyone. And he did not know who was behind,” Kurginyan stressed.
“And that’s how all the insanity of 1937 began, which Stalin later stopped, and Yezhov was executed. Where did this convulsion come from? And those workers’ rallies at factories (‘We demand that for every drop of our comrade’s blood…’), who started them?” he added.
According to the political scientist, the same thing happened with the attempt on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. “Who was this Kaplan? Why did she have to shoot? That’s where it all began,” Kurginyan noted.
He also recalled that the Bolsheviks initially released followers of the White movement on their word of honor. But then they formed an army, received foreign aid, and the Civil War broke out. “If they hadn’t banded together with the Entente and the Germans, who knows what the outcome of the Civil War would have been,” the analyst said.
“When Denikin’s soldiers and officers called Krasnov a German prostitute, he replied: ‘Yes, perhaps I am a German prostitute, but then the Volunteer Army are the pimps living off the German prostitute’s money’,” the political scientist reminded, quoting Krasnov.
According to him, terror begins the moment politicians cannot convince the people of their correctness, yet still want power. “When you don’t believe you can persuade the people. That’s when you become disillusioned and turn to violence,” Kurginyan explained.
“Most of the Decembrists [Russian revolutionaries who led an unsuccessful uprising on December 26, 1825], of course, had no intention of unleashing repressions, but the energetic Yakushkin seemed to ‘brandish the regicidal dagger’ [a quote from Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin, indicating the possibility of the repressions from the side of some Decembrists]. This also happened. And that also has certain tradition. The Great French Revolution and that very Brutus,” the political scientist noted.
“This is a longstanding tradition of revolutionary violence. And the responses are always proportional. How do civil wars break out? Through this,” he concluded.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
