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Basically, all of this is true. In particular, the use of Russian working-class men as cannon fodder in World War I, the inhuman conditions they lived under while at war, and the indifference of the upper classes to any of this, created morbid resentment among the lower classes toward the upper. While the common soldiers had to live under ghastly conditions of privation, cold, lice, disease, and lack of medical care, they witnessed first-hand the relatively cushy lives of the officers, and even more cushy lives of the commanders. It resonates with the American situation in Vietnam, where, because of the college draft deferment, working class and underclass men were often sent abroad to risk their lives for values held more closely by the upper classes. It also resonates with Plato's description of how the working classes lose respect for the rich when they serve side by side in war:
The question is how to move forward from it. The Russians picked the wrong answer. Dead wrong.
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