Yeah, they destroyed a nascent democracy(wasn't Tsarist at this point), destroyed economy with civil war that didn't recover for decades or maybe ever, killed millions, ended up with authoritarianism and imperialism anyway. Positive change. I guess by your logic millions of killed Russians is a positive change, that's not a serious conversation.

>Its problem was that not enough

There won't ever be enough, because it's unknowable who's not a true believer.

And even still, if you take power with force and violence, you still have to force people to behave willingly the way you want them or else it would be constant struggle and guerrilla warfare with the population. So it involves talking and propaganda anyway.

>If not for it, Russia would be likely conquered the world by now.

Learn your history. It performed very poorly in the WW1. It was backwards culturally, economically, and actually not very rich in terms of land(most of it is tundra). Even in the best case scenario it wouldn't have been much more influential/stronger than the USSR, which was organized and industrialized through brutality and fear, undermined its foundation and eventually collapsed. Such brutal methods are inaccessible to democratic European countries which Russia was headed to become before the communist overthrow, and the gained efficiency and the lack of civil war losses would have probably only compensated it the Soviet level. At least initially. And democratic countries generally become less aggressive and imperialistic in the information age, so there would have been less to fear.

>Empire greatly shrunk in size.

Only temporarily. End results matter. The only sizable loss was Finland and a bit of Poland. If you consider the Warsaw pact countries, which were USSR's client states, the empire even increased its size after the WW2.

>And then USSR collapsed due to overexpansion and not enough manpower.

It collapsed due to demotivation of the population and the elites. North Korean regime for example did not collapse, regardless of the famines and even shittier economic situation. Gorbachov specifically had grandparents tortured and sent to Gulag, so he probably had gripes with the political system.

>Russia would have been much stronger and had much more manpower to colonize and russify conquered lands.

Debatable. Without the revolution it would have been much more pussified. The British Empire collapsed momentarily, due to the lack of desire to murder lots of people to keep it whole. That's what democracy and the information age does to cultures.

Even if we take your supposition for granted, it only means that revolutions weaken states, fuck shit up, and the revolutionaries lose power eventually. So it's inapplicable in cases you propose it to use. I assume you don't want to live in a shithole recovering from a civil war(that would eventually collapse), or probably in prison after the inevitable purge.

If you didn't know, the empire had been dissolved peacefully by Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Saying that that was the result of the October revolution is inane.

It didn't lack manpower. Total BS. It's population situation was about average for Europe at the time. Men killed in wars don't affect population situation long term, because only women give birth, and a single man can impregnate hundreds.

>military casualties

what casualties? 14 thousand in Afghanistan? Don't make me laugh.

>and related economic failures.

I don't know what you are talking about. Failure to provide food reliably, due to over-urbanisation, is a policy and execution/motivation issue, not population issue. People were just allocated to their jobs improperly and worked shittily due to communism.

8.7 military are men, they are easily recoverable, especially with a welfare state. Minimally educated working women prefer to have a single child anyway.

Of the 19 million civilian deaths many were not of the reproductive age, i.e. old and infirm. Let's assume it's 5 million women of the reproductive age. So it's only about 7-10 million less people in the soviet union, assuming the fertility rate of the time, so probably only about 5-7 million additional Russians. You are saying 5-7 million fewer Russians broke the camel's back? Total BS.

Well it did throw Russia back of course, and indeed slowed its development, but not that critically long term. German losses as a % of the population are about the same, and they are doing many times better economically per capita, so the loss of population does not affect inherent cultural efficiencies or lack thereof. The outcome of the WW2 created the Pax Americana, and it's probably a good outcome. (Although it's now evident that Pax Americana lead to globalism, and I don't like cultural globalism)

The link of all that with the October revolution is tenuous at best. We simply don't know how a poorer a less brutal Russia would have performed in such a conflict.

If anything Russia could have become a force of good in the world for example, even better then the Americans. You can't know. Your deeply internalized beliefs about the Russian evilness are a product of your biography and genetics, upbringing in a country affected by the Russian shitty history that as you insist in this thread a product of Commie revolution. (Poorer life conditions breed shittier and eviler cultures.)

/know how a poorer/know how much poorer/

The USSR fell in the end because the country's organizational, labor allocative, motivational methods were inherently uncompetitive. If it fell in the 50 you might have had an argument, but it fell in the 80-90ies, two generations later. The population especially the intelligentsia lost any will to participate in the soviet project. Gorbachev's perestroika with its increased freedom of speech strongly demotivated everyone, because it was evident that the way things are done is just wrong, and they were very poor compared to their supposed western opponents. Even the KGB under perestroika lost its main suppressive purpose. They over-urbanized the population, didn't make rural kolkhoz life attractive enough due to their ideology of everyone gets the same shit, hence issues with agriculture and food production, resulting in dependence on foreign imports. That worsened during perestroika and further demotivated the population. The dissolution of the empire is just a consequence of the dissolution of the political regime in general.

The USSR would have been under pressure from the west anyway, regardless of several additional millions in 40ies or 90ies. Simply because the west and their allies like Japan and South Korea were many times the population size and many times the economic efficiency per capita. 5-10 additional million is a drop in a bucket against such an opponent, and all the "veterans" have reached the pensioner age by the end of the 80ies, were non-active and sucking resources, the less of them the better. The economic and motivational issues don't come from the lack of manpower like ever. If there was food on the table, and no freedom of speech there wouldn't be any "revolutionary situation".

Without perestroika it wouldn't have fallen, and perestroika wasn't inevitable. Just a fluke. Could have been another strongman instead of Gorby, who could have modernized the economy China style, or just increased repression and control (Russians are famous terpilas) Although who knows, if we assume the general cultural trends it's possible that a character like Gorby was inevitable, and with that the collapse of the USSR was also inevitable.

And that's fucking assuming quite a lot -- i.e. linking the October revolution with the supposed under-performance in WW2. It's more likely than not that the Russians without revolution could have performed even more poorly.