How effective were the Bolsheviks between 1903 and February 1917?

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How effective were the Bolsheviks between 1903 and February 1917?

The Bolsheviks were born in 1903 out of the Social Democrat Party of Russia, after a split with the Mensheviks. By 1917, they had seized power in Petrograd. The effectiveness of the party during this period has been called into question and is a highly controversial topic. The Bolsheviks played a relatively minor part in the 1905 revolution, and were a minority in the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies led by Trotsky. The less significant Moscow Soviet, however, was dominated by Bolsheviks, and this certainly gave the party a model for the Soviets used in 1917. In order to assess the success of the Bolsheviks in the 11 years between the revolutions, the influence of the party on revolutionary activity must be looked at, as their ultimate aim was to achieve a socialist revolution.

The first thing that must be considered is whether the party had developed a strong ideology, as this is crucial for revolution. In 1902, Lenin published ‘What is to Be Done?’, which detailed how the breakthrough was to be achieved. To accelerate the revolution, the party would have to go through certain organisational changes; they must be disciplined and centralised due to the competition from opposition groups and the success of the Okhrana in penetrating revolutionary groups. The Bolsheviks also formulated a strategy in which the long term aim (the dictatorship of the proletariat) was determined by the short term aim (the overthrow of the regime). Lenin developed a powerful revolutionary weapon by adapting Marxism to suit Russia, which had not developed enough to be ready for revolution based on the original Marxist theory. As a result of these adaptations, the Bolsheviks would not collaborate with the bourgeoisie, which further divided them from the Mensheviks who were more limited in their aims and therefore willing to work with any group that would bring down Tsarism. The official Soviet view of the period after the October revolution was that it was a period of patient consolidation or purposeful regrouping. It was during these years that the Bolsheviks consolidated the Party Central Committee, launched Pravda which outlined their ideology, and sat as a separate party in the new Duma. This view is somewhat logical, as the organisational changes after 1905 were vital in enabling them to use the war to their advantage. However, this view does not seem entirely accurate as there were still splits within the party which were linked to ideology. Many Bolsheviks, for example, still wanted to reunite the two Social Democratic factions, despite having an increasingly different agenda to the Mensheviks. Furthermore, there was controversy over whether to use legal or illegal methods and the use of expropriations to raise funds for the party. Therefore, this period was certainly not a completely successful period of ‘purposeful regrouping’, even if Lenin was able to publish his aims for the party.

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Another important source of evidence when assessing the effectiveness of the party is to look at how their actions influenced revolutionary activity. The party had more representatives than the Mensheviks and the Labourists in the 3rd and 4th Dumas, with 15 representatives in the 3rd increasing to 19 in the 4th, showing their growing popularity amongst the people. Lenin also published the daily newspaper, Pravda, which got closed down 8 times in its first two years of existence, but kept being reopened by the Bolsheviks under different names. In spite of police harassment, Pravda reached an average circulation of 40,000 between 1912 and 1914, ...

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