In the case of Russia and the places they influenced, it was a group of self-appointed elites that did the actual revolting, and then they imposed a new system on the populace.

What on earth are you talking about? How would “a group of self-appointed elites” even be enough to overthrow the government? That fundamentally doesn’t make any sense.

It’s also whitewashing the Tsar. As if the Russian people were happy and content while they were starving and subject to serfdom and being fed into the meat grinder of WWI.

Hell, Lenin is even on record saying that Russia wasn’t going to have a revolution, before it did, and by the time he arrived in Russia, the Tsar had already been forced to abdicate!