Congratulations, Russia.

[Tintrlvr]

Congratulations?  Everything since then has been worse.

Agreed. There were even glimmers of democracy in the waning days of Imperial Russia. Russia would most likely look like one of the generic parliamentary monarchies of Europe today if the Revolution had never happened. We might have even been spared WWII (or at least the European theater) and the Nazis since fear of communism would not have been high enough to propel fascists to power without the existence of an actual communist state.

[Tintrlvr]

In 1917 the Russian Empire was a great power, with the potential to be a superpower rivaling or even surpassing the USA. In 2017, Russia now has a GDP roughly the same as Australia and it's population drinking itself to death with a first world birth rate and 3rd world death rate.

It's been a rough 100 years.

In 1917 it was the weakest of several European powers, have being most recently beaten by Japan. It was a backwards agrarian economy where most people's lives had hardly advanced from the Middle Ages. Today it's the world's second most powerful country, with a growing population and the 6th highest GDP in the world. To be sure, it could have done better had it switched immediately to liberal, Western democracy, but it was going down the drain under the Czars.

Um...You are acting like they didn't lose 23% of their territory, over half of their population, and over half of their GDP 25 years ago and are struggling to try to crawl their way back to where they were 30 years ago while the rest of the world has moved on.

That has nothing to do with the February revolution. We are talking about the February revolution, not the October revolution. And even after all those losses, Russia is still more powerful today than it was in 1917, relatively or absolutely.

Edit: Everyone is acting like this thread is talking about the October revolution. That is false. I've said many times Western style liberal democracy would be the best form of government.

One led more or less inevitably to the other, unfortunately.