Atlas / Comparisons / Bolsheviks vs Institutional Revolutionary Party

Bolsheviks and Institutional Revolutionary Party

Measured distance across six axes

21.8 / 49.0 possible

Opposed programmes with little shared ground. They agree within three points on AU, SC. They diverge by eight points or more on EC, CU, ID, CH.

Axis by axis

AxisRSDLP(b)PRIGapReading
EC · Economic organisation−09+0110DivergesCarries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.
CU · Social and cultural order−05+049DivergesCarries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.
AU · Organisation of power+08+080AgreesEffectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about.
SC · Scale of decision+07+070AgreesEffectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about.
ID · Rule of membership−07+0310DivergesCarries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.
CH · Method and tempo+10−0414DivergesCarries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.

Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →

The evidence behind the widest gaps

A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.

RSDLP(b) · EC −09

Banks, land and large industry were taken into state ownership within a year of the seizure of power.

  • Documented act or statuteThe Decree on Land abolished private landownership in November 1917.
  • Documented act or statuteBanks were nationalised in December 1917 and large-scale industry in June 1918.

1 more artefact on the full entry →

PRI · EC +01

Coded +1: the same party redistributed land, nationalised oil and then signed NAFTA and privatised.

  • Documented act or statuteOil was nationalised in 1938; the banks were nationalised in 1982 and reprivatised from 1991.
  • Documented act or statuteNAFTA entered force in 1994 under a PRI president.

RSDLP(b) · CU −05

Culturally radical in the first phase: the most permissive family and gender law then in existence anywhere.

  • Documented act or statuteDivorce on demand, civil marriage and the legalisation of abortion were introduced between 1917 and 1920.
  • Documented act or statuteThe criminalisation of homosexuality was removed with the tsarist code in 1922.

PRI · CU +04

Coded +4: revolutionary anticlericalism succeeded by a conservative corporatist order.

  • Documented act or statuteThe 1917 constitution's anticlerical articles were softened by amendment in 1992.

What this comparison does not establish

Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.

Bolsheviks

1903–1924 · Russia

A disciplined vanguard party seizes power in the name of the working class and imposes socialism from above.

Institutional Revolutionary Party

1929– · Mexico

A party built to institutionalise a revolution and end military coups, which then held the presidency for seventy-one consecutive years.

Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.

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