Go to the game's main page
Review
Social Democracy: Petrograd 1917 starts with a quote from Kropotkin that states that individuals have almost no power to change the course of history, and while political parties have some, it is “far less than is usually thought.” This being the case, I assume the fact that playing the game felt like beating my head fruitlessly against a brick wall was entirely intended.
My party (the Mensheviks) had no money. The Provisional Government had no money. The people were starving and constantly on the verge of rioting about it. I raised taxes on businesses, then on everything else. I enacted austerity like three times because I kept getting in trouble for being in debt, which of course only made everyone angrier. I managed to get considerable sway in the Provisional Government, but I didn’t have the resources to actually do anything with it. Meanwhile, I had thrown my lot in with the internationalists, but never had any real opportunity to stop the war, which dragged on as my armies were continuously beaten to a pulp despite being nominally on the winning side. Which, to be fair, is how World War I went for original-timeline Russia.
I’ve never been of the impression that the October Revolution could have been easily avoided, but if I had been, this game would certainly have disabused me of it. I did feel like it was perhaps a bit more repetitive than I remember the original Social Democracy game being, but maybe that’s just because I was too broke all the time to see most of what it had to offer. Nevertheless, I do feel like the two games have very different vibes. In Social Democracy, you start out in a deceptively good position; it feels so feasible to stop the Nazis, until party infighting and rising unemployment take their toll. In Petrograd 1917, you start out in the pit and vainly try to scrabble your way out of it. Being consigned to the dustbin of history always feels more likely than not.
Maybe I’ll play as the Bolsheviks next time—although if there’s a way to stop the almost-inevitable revolution, maybe having me at the helm is it.
