To what extent was Lenin's leadership the main reason for Bolshevik success in 1917?

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To what extent was Lenin’s leadership the main reason for Bolshevik success in 1917?

Lenin’s leadership is a huge, and probably the main, contributing factor to the success of the Bolsheviks. His strong and decisive bid for power, in the name of the Bolsheviks, set the party on the right track for a revolution – without him the remaining Bolsheviks would have been very unlikely to make a bid for power, due to the absence of a leader and a motivator; therefore, would have probably adopted a Menshevik position of support for the Provisional Government.

The aforementioned probable path of the Bolsheviks if there was the absence of Lenin is clearly illustrated by Kamenev – the leader of the three-man committee which controlled and commanded the Bolshevik political activity in Petrograd in 1917 – and his adoption of a policy of support for the Provisional Government, and even his inclination in merging with the Mensheviks, views of which Stalin fully agreed with. With nobody opposing these views, the Bolshevik party will have dissolved and just become a part of the Provisional Government or the Mensheviks. Lenin however, decisively dismissed all these views of merging and adopting policies put forward a launch for a bid for power; thereby calling an outright opposition to the Provisional Government, and dismissing partnership with the Mensheviks. In this case, Lenin’s leadership and aims can be aptly described as the foundation on which the Bolshevik’s success was to be built upon – with no Lenin, there would have been no opposition to the other views alternating from power, therefore, no Bolshevik power, which in turn makes Lenin’s leadership essential for the Bolsheviks.

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By the increase of Bolshevik members from 25,000 in February to 75,000 in April, it is clear that Lenin was performing as a very able leader for the Bolshevik party. Even with this huge increase of support, he still realised that this platform wasn’t sufficient enough to perform a launch for power. His patience in gathering followers and anticipating the effects of fewer followers clearly defines Lenin as a remarkable leader and the main reason for the Bolshevik success. He sought to gather more followers by his issuing of the April theses which were a series of policies, designed to ...

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