I don’t think you can separate it like that given just a few months passing in between. Once they had power, they were pretty single-minded about reinforcing it and leaving nothing to chance.

“They tried to make their own reign stable” isn’t really an argument against them creating a power vacuum, no more than the Tsarist obsession with autocracy as a means of stability counts against the Tsar’s incompetence leading to a power vacuum.

Almost a year passed, in which Russia remained cohesive enough to maintain participation in WW1 and have radical, nationwide elections.

I mean, didn’t Spain and Portugal do something similar with South America?

Fighting very separate polities.

If they were actually fighting together you’d have a point, but what happened is that they drew a line on a map through Poland, independently expanded to it, and then didn’t cross it for a little while.

‘Independently expanded to it’ is a funny way of saying “Invading within two weeks of each other, causing the sudden dissolution of the Polish war plan, then meeting in the middle and having a joint victory parade”.

Oh, you meant the US. Sure, Soviet blood, American steel.

And without Britain staying in the fight, the US wouldn’t have gotten involved in Europe at all. And without Britain staying in the fight, a massive amount of air power would have been available for Operation Barbarossa.