How the Russian Revolution's script is curiously similar to the tech world's

The Russian revolution is probably the most written about event in the 20th century. It has been analysed to the bare bones based on facts dug out from various sources. Historians have a comprehensive account of what really happened and why.

One hundred years later, the revolution seems to have little resonance with most people across the world. It’s a legacy many don’t want to own. The revolution’s leaders are reviled today and are a largely discredited lot, for the most part. The last of the idols to fall was Lenin himself. Archival information shows that he was very much the founder of the Soviet state in all its cruel manifestations, although he probably thought he was doing the right thing at that time, as per Marxian morality.

But, beyond the ideas, ideals and ideologies, what remains relevant in the today’s context is the personality of the founding revolutionaries and the leaders who led the system they engendered. Those leaders can be considered archetypes whose motives, priorities and quirks play themselves out in organisations today too, including in business, especially in the tech world.

In many ways, the Russian revolution’s leaders were the founders of a startup that quickly became a monopoly, turned massive and bloated, and degenerated. It could be the story of many organisations that, having beaten back competition and conspired to keep competition away, degenerated under the stench of their own decay. The Bolshevik revolution is the story of change sought for on a mega scale and what happens to changemakers and the organisation they build upon the change. The parallels with the computer industry are often easy to draw, not just because the story of personal computers has been well chronicled.

The change that the Bolshevik revolutionaries wanted was complete. It was radical and brooked no ties with the past. Many of them, as exiles who had spent many years in advanced societies, practically hated everything about their own country. They promised, if not sought, a complete turnover, a true revolution in everything. They were not very different from the smart, geeky garage techies who wear their contempt for the biggies in their own field on their sleeves and dream of changing the world based purely on the strength of their ideas and courage and willpower, and, often, just chutzpah. The Bolsheviks only had their determination and their belief in their own correctness to sell and little else, to the point of sounding delusional.

The tech world began as a direct product of the counter-culture movement — hippies who set out to achieve a consciousness that can be in bliss whatever the circumstances. Steve Jobs sought refuge in Neem Karoli Baba in India so he could achieve a radical change within. They sought the ideal, in themselves.

Trotsky was a professional revolutionary and followed the beat of his own drum to the point of mercenary opportunism. Techie changemakers often fall into this category. Steve Jobs was a pain in the neck, in many people’s view, though there was never any doubt about his brilliance and his impact on the market.

Raised on do-it-yourself kits and having seen big computers in college campuses, they wanted computers that they could make themselves and that could be programmed by all the users. West coast tree-huggers by temperament, they wanted to upend the big computer companies that were part of the American north-eastern establishment.

Among this large community of geeks, often impossibly idealistic folks, were shrewd changemakers who wanted to reach the very top — in money, recognition, power and control. Jobs initially made a personal computer for the masses but in an idealistic way thought the masses would turn into programmers who would actually code the computer. It was just a habit of thinking that Jobs quickly shed. His core vision was to personalise computers and make them essential to the lives of the masses, even if they didn’t see any need for them. The people didn’t need to be able to own them by coding their applications but should be able to use them for everything. Breaking ranks with the idealists, Bill Gates wrote an “open letter to the hobbyists” that people who write software need to get paid for it — and, of course, he was the one who was going to get paid the most.

Source: Wikipedia

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov a.k.a. Lenin (1870-1924) founded the Russian Communist Party and led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 before going on to build the Soviet Union post-Monarchy.

While Lenin started out seeking a complete social revolution where the proletariat or people ran the nation, his movement ended up as a dictatorship.

The entire Russian dissident community was suffused with woolly idealism and impractical folks. But Lenin and his cohorts were practical politicians, ruthless in the exercise of their craft. With “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”, he broke ranks with them, laying out a vision for a practical revolutionary party that would seize power, and of course it also meant that the party would centre around him and his followers.

For most of his life, Lenin could never transcend and reach beyond, gain the respect of all his countrymen and carry them along. He sought consensus in the small band of determined revolutionaries he gathered around himself, not outside of it. The very ruse of calling themselves Bolshevik, or the majority, was clever. The label that they were the majority was an enormous advantage even if that had no basis in reality. Just a few months into their revolution, they lost the elections — the first ever held as per universal adult suffrage in Russia and probably the whole world. Yet, Lenin had the confidence to make short work of the constituent assembly that had been elected, and instead pushed for all power to the Soviets — a structure that was open to manipulation and corruption since it was not based on popular elections. Lenin thought, or at least argued, that the people had moved beyond the constituent assembly and he and his group alone represented and led the revolutionary ferment that had reached a high point.

Techie changemakers often seem to think for the market too. They try to will the market to accept their vision even if that often leads to disastrous results. Jobs’ NeXT computer overshot its price target and wasn’t as fast as the Sun Microsystems machines even if it looked great. But Jobs seemed to think his product presentation would be enough to overcome its deficiencies.

The revolution itself — the capture of power — was a work of true genius. Lenin struck when his enemies were at their weakest and his friends totally unconvinced. Stalin, the organisational man, voted against going through with the October revolution.

All his life, Lenin had distrusted Trotsky because he did not seem loyal to anyone. Trotsky was a professional revolutionary and followed the beat of his own drum to the point of mercenary opportunism. He was yet another changemaker, and too full of himself to accept Lenin as his leader and mentor, unlike the Bolsheviks did. For all their claim to being true to Marxism, the Bolsheviks were just Lenin’s coterie. They were charmed by him and he was just about old enough for them to vest authority in him. They were awed by the sheer force of his personality. Many disagreed with him and often bitterly so, but, in their hearts, they were Ilyich’s minions.

Trotsky was no minion of Ilyich. He had a nagging suspicion and doubt about Lenin and disagreed with him in fundamental ways. Yet, for all his brilliance, ability to move mountains, and revolutionary smarts, he never fully believed that he could be the supreme leader of an organisation. An intellectual with eclectic interests who co-wrote the surrealist manifesto, Trotsky was a bit of a dandy. He dressed well and looked impressive. He could inspire thousands to go and fight but could not command the personal loyalty of even a few people. He was the one who could orchestrate the revolution but had no stomach to work in an organisation and engage in a war of organisational attrition to build an empire. He had an uncanny ability to put off his colleagues.

Techie changemakers often fall into this category. Steve Jobs was a pain in the neck, in many people’s view, though there was never any doubt about his brilliance and his impact on the market. He often knew what worked. Very early on, he latched on to the Graphical User Interface, which is what makes computers look and feel they way they do today. Until that time, computer monitors were ugly black screens with green patterns and a nasty blob of a cursor.

Trotsky knew how to put together the mechanisms to organise the putsch. And Lenin needed that skill to make his revolution and brought Trotsky into his clique. So, it was this small cabal of highly motivated disciplined people, who were dedicated to one goal and had no doubt who their leader was, that delivered.

Once there, Lenin used all his communication powers to secure his cabal’s hold on power until it became the only game in town. The others were simply vanquished, defeated in physical battle. The Socialist Revolutionaries, who were — arguably enough — more popular than the Bolsheviks, did not have the intellectual wherewithal and gravitas of Lenin and his band. It was a game of perception and Lenin was a past-master at winning it. Suddenly, from being a faction, the misnamed Bolshevik faction offered a chance for everyone who wanted a bigger role for themselves in society to join and progress in their lives.

 

The ideas came from his colleagues, or comrades as they were called, but Joseph Stalin made them his own and, eventually, got rid of them.

Lenin’s successor Stalin was in crucial ways like a corporate manager. He had no view of his own, no essential belief nor grand vision. A cautious empire-builder, he played his colleagues against each other, siding with one group and hitting out against the other, and later siding with the other and hitting out against the former. The ideas came from his colleagues, or comrades as they were called, but he made them his own and, eventually, got rid of them.

The communist party that was born out of Lenin’s faction offered a career for the politically and socially minded, having established a monopoly. But the party wasn’t run as a freewheeling organisation. It was representative of the people, but just to the point where the top could control the whole organisation. Barring a few fields such as high science, weaponry and space, in which it competed with America, the Soviet system did not need innovators and changemakers. It had a monopoly on power and did not want disruption.

The biggest and truest changemaker, Trotsky, was exiled. Others were killed, sunk into oblivion. Down the line, the system mastered the art of keeping everyone in line, through the use of power politics, downright murder, physical torture and psychological tactics. If Trotsky’s name was even mentioned, a person could get sidelined. The mechanisms of control were total and powerful. Brezhnev’s regime used the science of psychology and psychiatry to keep the talented changemakers in line.

The focus was more on making people conform to the organisation rather than innovation and change. As far as the Communist party was concerned, all change had happened with that one putsch in November 1917. With that one stroke when IBM put Microsoft's DOS as the operating system on its PCs, Microsoft became a monopolistic incrementalist, sustaining itself through what, in business, are called product upgrades.

There were indeed tentative attempts to reform the Soviet system, including that of Gorbachev. The phenomenon of Gorbachev is unique in history. He was a true believer and an idealist. Most historians have concluded that there really was no need for a Soviet leader to push for the changes the way he did. He could have ridden into the sunset like Brezhnev did.

Gorbachev’s elevation, ironically enough, was a product of factional intrigue. He had caught the fancy of Andropov who promoted him, but Andropov was anything but a misty-eyed reformist. He represented the intelligence community in the CPSU — since Lenin’s time the cloak-and-dagger folks were designed to be a well-entrenched power within the party. But that group, often well-traveled, had little use for ideological shibboleths. And Gorbachev seemed to go to the founding vision of the communist movement for renewal.

There is probably no parallel in the tech world to Gorbachev. Among the cuckoos and hippies, there were many brilliant folks who wanted to keep computers and software pure — pure as in stripped of business aims. They were happy with the clubby, self-sufficient academic setting and wanted things to stay that way. For instance, the free software movement mounted a powerful challenge to the companies that inherently aspired to becoming a monopoly. Its archangel, Richard Stallman was often presented as the counter to Bill Gates. But the movement was destined to fight a losing battle.

When India embarked on its mission to computerise government operations, free software sought to find headway here, far from America. It seemed like a perfect fit. Free software was strong, powerful, secure and possibly superior and its applications better. And the cost was going to be much, much less. But Indian bureaucrats often baulked. They knew that in government they had to fix responsibilities and pass the buck. A system that sought to rely on a nebulous world of good Samaritans on the Internet for support couldn’t pass muster in the government system where checks and balances often killed bold decisions.

Richard Stallman could inspire idealistic-minded folks and command respect. Kropotkin, the Russian idealistic saint who subscribed to pure communist anarchism, was popular among the masses. Lenin indulged him, while disagreeing with him, and allowed his funeral to take place. But power was vested with Lenin.

It is to the lasting credit of the Communist Party of Soviet Union that it still had, in its ranks, an idealist like Gorbachev that they put in charge. But in the end, the changemakers he unleashed got the better of him and his party, which couldn’t come to grips with the radicals. There was no way the changemakers could be harmonised within the system.

The end seemed so very scripted, as if someone wanted the Marxian saying “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” to come true. Just as how the Bolshevik revolution started with the government fearful of a right-wing putsch — the Kornilov affair — and pleading for Bolshevik support, the revolution ended with the regime pleading for Yeltsin’s support to stave off a left-wing coup.

Do organisations end the way they started? Perhaps Microsoft would be upended by another open letter to the software folks that would spawn another business altogether, but it appears that the letter-writer will likely not come from within Microsoft.

But, Google has sought to buck the trend. By splitting the company and creating space for “crazies” who could work on apparently outlandish projects, Google hopes that the next big thing will come from within its ranks even while it continues to hog advertisement dollars based on its near-monopoly position. Meanwhile, the main company continues to bring in the funds with a drip-drip method of securing the monopoly and introducing incremental product innovations. Apple sought to save itself by bringing back its founder who did save it. If only all the purged and the exiled could have found their way back to the Soviet Union and helped to chart new ways… if only wishes were horses.