why were the bolsheviks succussful in their revolution?

Lenin’s return and the april theses (3 april)

• returned and gave a speech (april theses)

• lenin stressed a policy of non-coopoeration with the provisional govt

• lenin argued russian middle class was too weak to carry through a full “bourgeois revolution”

• by end of april, lenin won over majority of central committee of bolshevik party

april theses demands

• power should be transfered to the soviets

• war should be brought to an immediate end

• all land should be taken over by the state and re-allocated to peasants by local soviets

initial reaction to to Lenin reappearance

• bolsheviks feared that lenin had grown out of touch

• allegations that lenin was in pay of germans

• mensheviks feared Lenin would undermine what they had been doing

• bolsheviks had only 26,000 members and were still a minority among the socialists

• bolsheviks were divided

all russian congress

• “all russian congress of soviets” met in petrograd on 3 june, passed a vote of no confidence in the provisional govt

• trotsky finally decided to join bolshevik cause

vote of no confidence seats (3 june)

543 votes to 126

july days

• grain prices had doubled in petrograd

• 20,000 armed sailors from kronstadt joined workers and soliders on the streets

• warrants for the arrest of bolsheviks issued and trotsky gaoled

• soviet newspaper izvestia denounced the role of the bolsheviks

• bolshevik propaganda was burned and the offices of the bolshevik newspaper pravda closed

• lenins reputation fell

kornilov affair

• bolsheviks were released from gaols and soldiers, sailors and workers again took to the streets

• kerensky even supplied them with arms

• bolsheviks created “red guards”, a militia they had trained in secret

growing electoral support

• duma elections in moscow, Bolshevik support increased

• elections for petrograd soviet: bolsheviks won a majority

• 21 spetember: trotsky became chairman of the petrograd soviet

• bolsheviks exerted an influence out of all proportion to its numbers

• bolsheviks were undermining theprovisional govt with a successful propoaganda campaign

increase in bolshevik support

increased by 164% between june and december

increase in bolshevik membership

increased to 200,000 by beginning of october

bolshevik newspapers

producing 41 newspapers

number of redguards in factories

10,000 red guards in the capital factories

Lenin’s demands for revolution

• mid-september, Lenin (still hiding in Finland) bombarded 12-man central committee of bolshevik party with demands to stage a revolution and seize power

• Grigorii Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, fearing that Russia was not yet economically ready for revolution

• 12th september: Kamanev and zinoviev believed hat they should not act before the results of the constituent assembly elections

• 7 october: Lenin secretly returned to petrograd to attend a meeting of the central committee and try to win them over in person to the policy of taking power immediately

the military revolutionary committee

• Bolsheviks were helped by the war

• soldiers were susceptible to bolshevik agitators

• german capture of Riga (close to Pgrad) meant many feared that the german would reach Pgrad

• allowed ps under the leadership of trotsky and creation of the MRC

how much did the MRC control

• 200,000 red guards

• 60,000 baltic sailors

• 150,000 soldiers of the petrograd garrison

the fateful meeting

10th october: lenin harangued the central committee of the bolshevik party all night and finally succeeded

why did the bolsheviks succeed in October 1917?

• policies and propaganda

• continuation of the war

• role of lenin and trotsky

• political actions and popular support

why did the provisional government fail?

• kerensky’s mistakes jun-oct

• kornilov affair

• lack of political legitamacy

• failure to deal with russia’sproblems (war,land, economy)