This confirms my worst fears. But there is another scenario, hidden within some of the historic examples you have given.

The greatest power is not the power of destruction and violence, but the power of wei wu wei – the power of not doing. This is what made the difference in at least two of the examples you give:

The Russian (February) Revolution: While you focus on the October “Revolution” (it was really a coup) and the civil war which followed, the original overthrow of the Czar was accomplished without bloodshed. The peasants and the workers were just tired. The soldiers (who were conscripted peasants and workers themselves) were also tired, especially of fighting a useless war. They refused to shoot their own people. Everyone who mattered just stopped, and the government fell apart. The soviets which were created started out as a true exercise in participatory democracy. If the interim government had the sense to get out of WWI, then the Bolsheviks probably would not have been able to take them over.

The American Civil War: As W.E.B. Du Bois pointed out in his book, Black Reconstruction in America, the Civil War was won, not by the Union Army, but by what amounted to a general strike by enslaved Africans and poor Whites. The Confederacy had counted on the continued production by their slave labor force, while the Union had to sacrifice its farmers and workers to the war effort. But as the Union Army advanced into the South, the enslaved workers abandoned their work. They went over to Union lines, often joined by poor Whites, and offered their services to to the Union. Their supply line cut off, the Confederate army just collapsed.

There is another option today as well. We have the power of wei wu wei today. Specifically, we can:

NOT pay rent;

NOT pay mortgage;

NOT pay any bank debt;

NOT pay (federal) taxes;

NOT contribute labor to business or government, but instead labor to take care of each other.

This is what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “militant non-violence.” It is more difficult, but can achieve more than the easy route of violence.