New Lenin Presentation Outline

Lenin’s change of tactics

Upon hearing about the Tsar’s abdication, Lenin returned from exile in the German provided ‘sealed train’, Lenin needed to advance his efforts to bring about real socialist revolution. Before his return, he produced the April Theses, this was a major change in Bolshevik thought and indeed, when Lenin read it out to the party he had to read it out twice, very slowly. 1. No support for the Provisional Government This was a big thing for the Bolsheviks to comprehend, especially as, in Lenin’s absence, Stalin and Kamenev had assumed control of the party and accepted the Provisional Government as a way to run the country. In essence, they believed that if opposed, the supporters of the Provisional Government, which were generally middle class and bourgeois, would fight for the return of the tsarist autocracy. Lenin however didn’t have any confidence in the Provisional Government, he believed that the fact that they were sharing power with the Soviets essentially undermined them and were in fact overshadowed by the Soviets who had a stronger support base from the people.

2. Greater appreciation and use of the Soviets Lenin realised that the Soviets of Workers Deputies were the focus of mass proletariat action, he described them as ‘an organisation of the workers, the embryo of a workers government, the representative of the entire mass of the poor section of the population, i.e. of nine-tenths of the population, which is striving for peace, bread and freedom’. The Petrograd Soviet brought together masses of workers, soldiers and sailors, all who Lenin could use in his fight for the downfall of the Provisional Government, revolution and the Bolshevik victory.

The trial run was over Lenin believed that the 1905 revolution along with the eight day revolution of February 1917 was just a trial run

Did the April Theses bring about Lenin’s success in the revolution?