World's Most Powerful Empires - Maybe

[caldrail]

Just now I was leafing through an internet article describing the greatest empires ever. I've heard of most of them, although a fair few I have no knowledge of at all. Naturally I felt a little bit of patriotic pride when the British Empire emerges up at the top of the list, but what struck me more about the article was the dubious content here and there. Did the Mongol Empire ever actually control South Africa like the map showed? Or did Stalin actually allow multi-party elections in Russia in 1991, when most sources will tell you it was Gorbachev long after Stalin was dead?

A reminder therefore that the internet is not a reliable source of information. 

[Novosedoff]

Yeah, the British empire was apparently the largest by square miles.

As for Russia, it was at its largest territorial expansion by the time of the sale of Alaska. It is true that USSR under Stalin was formally a multi-party state, it was abolished later under Brezhnev when USSR turned into a one-party state with the adoption of the new Constitution. Also USSR actually abolished the voting restrictions about 30 years before the US did the same in 1965 for black folks. That's how ironic the history could be 🙂

[caldrail]

I have to take issue with your answer. Whilst Lenin did not overtly suppress democracy in 1917, he increasingly acted to install communist rule during Civil War, inluding sidelining the pro-democratic Sovnarkom and using the Pro-communist Politburo as effective government, not only because it was politically sympathetic to his ideals, but because it was smaller and more manageable. Indeed, before 1925 Lenin had shifted the focus from workers representation to a bureaucratic system, introduced the Cheka who persecuted political opposition, and by suppressing factions was able to centralise government. After all, the Kronstadt rebellion was about dissatisfaction with the Communist regime, and inside the Party itself, Lenin acted against democratic and workers factions to reinforce single party rule.

Stalin was of course a compatriot of Lenin and aside from his personal desire to dominate, was also staunchly communist and quite obviously had already benefitted from the one party state. Why would he weaken his own power base to allow democratic influence?

[Novosedoff]

Well, I suppose Mr. Stalin would rather cleave his opponent's skull somewhere in the dark at the night time than allow all that "democratic influence" to spread. You see, sometimes a person may seem like intelligent and nice, but God only knows what's hidden inside.

In the above post I referred specifically to what was written in the Russian constitution. You may laugh, but over the course of the 20th century we had a few Constitutions in Russia, 5 to be precise. So initially the first constitution ordained by the Bolsheviks in 1918 introduced some voting restrictions for the old ruling class of Tsar's nobility (there were still some remaining in Russia after self-expulsion and mass purge). 
Before Bolsheviks took over Russia, we actually had had the February revolution of 1917 which brought about the universal suffrage, so women got their voting rights (before the same thing was legalized in the UK actually).
One of the later Soviet constitutions abolished the voting restrictions for the old Russian nobility who were in minority anyway. But it was only in 1978 when Russians found out that they had been actually allowed to have more than one ruling party, because the new Constitution of 1978 abolished that 😂
 

Edited October 24, 2021 by Novosedoff

[Novosedoff]

But we still beat Brits, if not by the size of the territory then by the number of victims of serial killers 😆

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_number_of_victims?wprov=sfla1

By the way an interesting thought I encountered the other day: the voting rights for women were only possible because of the WW1. Can anybody suggest an explanation for HOW the development could possibly come about because of the war?)

Edited December 3, 2021 by Novosedoff