Lenin & the Russian Revolution.

 

If Lenin was such an orthodox Marxist as the English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, believed, then Lenin would have held to the view that Russia had to go through a period of capitalist industrial development and bourgeois democracy before there could be a revolution. Marxist revolutions are supposed to take place not in agrarian societies like Russia, but in highly industrialised economies like Britain, France or Germany. 

In February 1917, when the Russian Revolution broke out in Petrograd, Lenin was in Zurich and Trotsky was touring America. When he was in Zurich in 1917, Lenin had told students that he didn't think the revolution would happen in his or his generations lifetime. The Bolsheviks who were in Petrograd were taken completely by surprise. They were preparing for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. 

In 1917, around 80% of the Russian population would've been peasants. Lenin was taken to Petrograd by the Germans in the so-called "sealed train." When he arrived at Petrograd's Finland Station on April 3, 1917, he addressed a crowd of workers and Bolsheviks, and denounced the Provisional Government and demanded an immediate socialist revolution. He outlined his radical 'April Theses' calling for the Soviets to take power. 

The Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, because nobody really wanted it. The Petrograd Soviet had the power but didn't want the responsibility and the Provisional Government had the responsibility but not the power. Had Lenin not arrived in Petrograd in April 1917; events may have taken a completely different course in Russia. Such is the power of agency. Lenin basically responded to events that had been initiated spontaneously. 

Between 1918 and 1921, the country was plunged into civil war with the Bolsheviks fighting the counter revolutionary ‘White Army' and a war with the Russian peasantry.