AQA 7042 · 2N · R03 - Developments between the revolutions including: the return of Lenin
Between the February/March and October/November revolutions, political initiative shifted repeatedly: Lenin returned and challenged his own party, armed demonstrators exposed the limits of Bolshevik strength, and the Kornilov crisis discredited the Provisional Government. This lesson explains how Marxism and Leninism shaped the April Theses, how the July Days and Kornilov coup changed the balance of power, and why Lenin still had to persuade the Bolshevik Central Committee before the party committed itself to insurrection.
Lenin returns to a divided revolution
Russia still used the Old Style (Julian) calendar in 1917. Dates below are Old Style, with the New Style date in parentheses at the first important occurrence. Thus Lenin arrived in Petrograd on the night of 3 April (16 April), and the “October” Revolution later occurred in November by the calendar used in western Europe.
Lenin returned to a political system usually described as dual power. The Provisional Government held formal ministerial authority and promised a future Constituent Assembly, while the Petrograd Soviet possessed influence among the capital's workers and garrison soldiers. Moderate Socialist Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders in the Soviet supported the government conditionally because they believed Russia was passing through a democratic, rather than socialist, stage of revolution. The unresolved war, land question, inflation and food supply nevertheless kept transferring pressure from formal institutions to organised workers, soldiers and peasants.
Lenin had been in exile in Switzerland. German authorities permitted him and other émigrés to cross Germany by rail because they hoped anti-war revolutionaries would weaken an enemy still fighting on the Eastern Front. Restrictions made the travellers' compartments effectively extraterritorial, which produced the famous but oversimplified image of a completely “sealed train”. German assistance with transit explains why the Provisional Government could later make damaging allegations about Lenin; it does not by itself prove that Lenin took political orders from Germany.
Two connected ideas shaped the programme Lenin brought home:
- Marxism explained historical development through material conditions and class struggle. Capitalism divided those who owned productive property—the bourgeoisie—from wage workers, the proletariat; Marx expected workers ultimately to overthrow capitalist rule.
- Leninism, as the term is used for this period, was Lenin's practical adaptation of Marxism. It gave a disciplined revolutionary party a leading role, treated the world war as a crisis of imperialist capitalism, sought power through the soviets, and joined worker leadership to the support of poorer peasants and the hope of wider European revolution.
Lenin was therefore important as a strategist, but his return did not make revolution inevitable. His programme could matter only if a party accepted it and if workers, soldiers and peasants found it relevant to their own demands.
The April Theses reshape Bolshevik strategy
On 4 April (17 April) Lenin presented the ideas published as the April Theses. They were not a detailed timetable for an immediate coup. They were a strategic break with conditional support for the Provisional Government and a programme for winning support before power passed to the soviets.
The main connections were:
| Lenin's claim | Proposed direction | Why it challenged policy after February |
|---|---|---|
| The war remained imperialist because a capitalist government still fought it. | Reject “revolutionary defencism” and campaign for a peace without annexations. | Many moderate socialists defended continuing the war to protect the revolution. |
| The Provisional Government represented bourgeois power. | Give it no support; expose its failures patiently rather than join it. | Some Bolshevik leaders had been prepared to pressure or support it while it acted progressively. |
| The first, democratic stage had transferred formal power away from the tsar, but had not met workers' and peasants' demands. | Transfer state power to soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies. | This pointed beyond a conventional parliamentary republic and towards a worker-led socialist transition. |
| Land, finance and production expressed class power. | Nationalise landed estates, combine banks under Soviet control, and bring production and distribution under Soviet supervision. | Lenin linked political power to material demands without claiming socialism could be introduced fully overnight. |
| The old socialist organisations had compromised over war. | Revise the party programme and name, and create a new revolutionary International. | Bolsheviks were to become a distinct anti-war revolutionary party rather than reunite with moderate social democrats. |
This was Leninism in action: not abandoning Marxist class analysis, but arguing that war and dual power had created a route from the democratic revolution towards socialist power. His claim was controversial. Leaders such as Lev Kamenev feared that Russia's economic and social development made a socialist transition premature. Lenin had to persuade rather than simply command. By the Bolsheviks' Seventh Conference of 24–29 April (7–12 May), the party had adopted the central direction of no support for the government and power to the soviets.
The April Theses mattered in two ways. They kept the Bolsheviks outside later coalition governments, so failures over war, land and living standards damaged their Socialist Revolutionary and Menshevik rivals more directly. They also gave diverse grievances a connected political answer: peace required a different class government; land and economic control required power; soviets could supply an alternative institution. Yet slogans did not equal a majority. That weakness became visible in July.
The July Days expose Bolshevik limits
The July Days, principally 3–4 July (16–17 July), grew from several pressures at once. The Provisional Government's June military offensive was turning from early advance into collapse. The First Machine Gun Regiment feared the transfer of men and weapons from Petrograd to the front. Workers faced inflation and insecurity, Kronstadt sailors had radicalised, and Kadet ministers' resignations created another government crisis. These conditions produced action from below before the Bolshevik Central Committee had decided that the moment for taking power had arrived.
On 3 July the First Machine Gun Regiment resolved to demonstrate. Workers from the Vyborg district and Putilov works, soldiers and then Kronstadt sailors converged on the Tauride Palace, where the Soviet Executive Committee met. Many carried weapons and demanded that the Soviet take power from the Provisional Government. Violence and street shooting occurred, although historians disagree about how much was intended, defensive or provoked.
The Bolshevik role was divided:
- Party agitation had spread the demand for Soviet power, and radical Bolsheviks in the Military Organisation and local committees encouraged action.
- Lenin and the Central Committee initially urged restraint. They feared Petrograd radicals were moving without reliable support in the provinces or at the front.
- Once crowds gathered at Bolshevik headquarters, the leadership tried to coordinate the movement as an armed but peaceful demonstration. That late intervention created responsibility without giving the party effective control.
This is why two simple descriptions both fail. The July Days were not merely a peaceful march: demonstrators were armed, fighting occurred and some participants wanted the government overthrown. Nor is there firm evidence that they were a centrally planned Leninist seizure of power: initiative was dispersed and the senior party leadership hesitated.
The Soviet Executive Committee refused the demand to take power. Loyal troops reached the capital, the crowds dispersed, and the Provisional Government closed Bolshevik premises and publications, disarmed participants and arrested leaders. Lenin escaped into hiding in Finland. Leon Trotsky, who had returned to Russia in May and whose Inter-District group was moving into the Bolshevik Party, defended the movement and was imprisoned in the crackdown.
The immediate result was a severe Bolshevik setback. Yet July also taught Lenin and the Central Committee that slogans and militant support in Petrograd were insufficient: any later attempt required better organisation, wider Soviet support and a moment when the government could not isolate the party. The government then squandered its temporary advantage.
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