This essay responds to Jonathan Smele's exercise in counterfactual history, which makes the case that no other contender for power had sufficient organizational capacity or popular appeal to present a viable challenge to Bolshevik victory in the civil war. The Bolsheviks indeed enjoyed various structural and strategic advantages, but they faced powerful opposition. This essay presents the ‘counterfactual’ of the civil war as an actually existing component - the urge to self-representation and social justice expressed by vast segments of the old imperial population. The successful projects of national self-assertion that pressed against the centre can also be seen as really actualized alternatives. The Bolshevik outcome, in this light, appears not as the default, but as the defeat of other plausible futures for the post-imperial Russian state.

中文翻译：

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“一个平民妓女”——对俄罗斯内战的可能存在的反思

这篇文章回应了乔纳森·斯梅勒 (Jonathan Smele) 在反事实历史中的演练，这表明没有其他权力竞争者具有足够的组织能力或民众吸引力，可以对布尔什维克在内战中的胜利提出可行的挑战。布尔什维克确实享有各种结构和战略优势，但他们面临强大的反对。本文将内战的“反事实”作为一个实际存在的组成部分——旧帝国人口的大部分表达的自我代表和社会正义的渴望。压迫中央的国家自我主张的成功项目也可以被视为真正实现的替代方案。从这个角度来看，布尔什维克的结果似乎不是默认的，而是后帝国时代的俄罗斯国家其他可能的未来的失败。