MacArthur was not a grand liberator, certainly. I am not complimenting him nor shall I ever

I understand. I didn't mean to imply that you were, it's just a personal bugbear. Sorry for the derail.

I didn't really come here as much to debate "What if my idea was stupid"

I'm not saying it is, or even that it would matter if it was. We can hardly discern good ideas from bad without subjecting them to scrutiny, and we usually require the scrutiny of others to account for the blindspots that every individual necessarily has. I'm just saying that you keep stating that it was a huge missed opportunity, and that seems to be begging your question. If you're really interested in "what if", you have to be willing to consider the possibility that it wouldn't be a raging success.

The question of plausibility is barely relevant

Why? Isn't the plausibility of the scenario part of the question? We could debate what would happen if Caesar made an H-bomb from clay and straw, but there's probably more likely scenarios that are more deserving of our attention.

But your objections preclude the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, which are historical facts.

I'm not an expert, but I can say that you're pretty far off on the American revolution. It wasn't led by peasants, but by the middle class. The reason the Intolerable Acts were such a big deal was that they impacted users of stationary, i.e. literate lawyers, bankers and other information-workers, i.e. the middle- and upper-class, i.e. the very people with the resources to resist them. Also, it wasn't a revolution for "freedom" so much as it was a revolution against paying for the war that had just kept the American colonies out of French hands. It eventually evolved into a democratic independence movement, but originally it was just a bunch of rich dudes who didn't want to pay tax. The thought of independence didn't arrive 'til rather late in the game, and most of the original objectors spent most of the period thinking of themselves as patriotic British citizens with a minor quibble. The modern American view of the peasant farmer rising up for FREEDOM is, frankly, about as real as the tooth-fairy.

Every peasant in the world had every reason in the world to want to better their lot

No, not really. Pretty much the entire Medieval period was characterized by the philosophy that you play your ordained part in life, be it serf or prince, and if you do it well without too much fuss, you get rewarded in the afterlife. This "climb the ladder" ethos is very modern.

you seem to be arguing that the state of the Russian peasantry and middle class was in some way...better than prerevolutionary France? Or that revolution could never occur in Russia?

Not at all. I'm arguing that for revolution to occur, you need a peasant class that's desperate enough to risk almost certain death, and a middle-class with the will and resources to lead them (cities with large populations to whip up also help, but that's another story). Russia may have had the former (debatable), but it lacked the latter, because it was a couple centuries behind the rest of Europe in terms of development. See, Russia missed the Renaissance, possibly due to having the Mongols hang around for an extra couple of centuries, and they've never really recovered.

These red herrings baffle me and I follow them, though I admit freely that I want to discuss "what then" instead of "what if Russians really liked serfdom?"

They aren't red herrings, though - they're places where you're imposing modern assumptions on other eras. It's like wondering why there wasn't a feminist revolution in Tudor England. So much of what we take for granted are assumptions handed to us by the society in which we live, which makes it very easy to assume that everyone thinks the same way you do because, hey, why wouldn't they? Then you talk to a middle-class Chinese person who's truly mystified at all the fuss over this "democracy" thing and doesn't understand why they'd want to get rid of the Communists, and you start to realize that there are a lot more worldviews out there than you'd previously thought. The same applies to the past - it's a mistake to assume they thought the way you do. If your neighbourhood was hit with an epidemic of cholera, you'd probably start boiling your water, but an 18th-century person wouldn't, because the germ theory of disease hadn't yet been invented. Modes of thought are as much technology as cars or high-carbon steel.

engaging the very people that their Revolution was purported to save.

What evidence is there that the French were interested in extending those rights to everyone? Why wouldn't they look on Russians the same way they looked on Africans?

You are arguing it was impossible to even try, fine, I heard you.

Not really. I'm arguing that it would have been very, very difficult and that the potential gains were likely very small. It's a fine but important distinction. Modern propaganda has been made possible by revolutions in thought and technology, and I'm not sure the same tactics could have been used by Napoleon even if he'd had the idea.

That's an interesting point.

Thanks. If you'd ever like some depressing reading, check out the relationship between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. It's pretty much the East getting stomped on while the West either watches nonchalantly or actively participates. It's also likely the reason most people can't name the city that spent a thousand years keeping Europe from becoming a province of various Middle Eastern empires.