Failed Revolutions

Where the revolutions could not succeed because they fell out amongst themselves,

and didn’t behave with enough decency to stop the bloodshed.

Stalin’s little policemen, getting people out of their beds in the middle of the night,

And making them explain their thoughts.

When will they be satisfied with explanations?

Murdering them in the woods and in the work camps

What kind of workers’ revolution is this?

A revolution that eats its very own self!

Robespierre didn’t believe in the death penalty when he was first elected,

but it didn’t take long until all the Jacobins’ opponents were under the guillotine,

then they thinned their own ranks,

and finally he had to go too.

Many revolutions end up eating themselves.

Lenin warned on his deathbed that Stalin was not suitable to lead their Revolution,

but no one stopped him in time and he killed them all,

nearly every single one of the original Bolsheviks was executed or assassinated in the purges.

No wonder no one dared try to save him when he when he died.

“Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire!”

“If you even think about me in an inappropriate way I will have you killed!”

The Soviet Slaughterhouse of Socialist Republics

(sorry dictatorship, not plural, not a real republic)

The Taiping Rebellion was the same in China between the 1840’s and the 1860’s.

At first it looked as if the foreign Manchu dynasty was doomed to disappear,

but the revolutionaries didn’t know what they believed.

As society broke down in the south the rebellion turned upon itself in struggles for succession.

The farming wasn’t getting done, incentives disappeared.

Syria was similar in different sense.

The people protested against the government.

Instead of listening to their requests the Assad family regime began a crackdown,

and the Arab Spring soon turned to winter.

Driven into the arms of rebellion the sections split up for self defence,

and Civil War turned into sectional polarization.

Goodbye revolution, hello civil war, and it turned religious.

(A Historical semi poem)