The Political Background

Abstract

On 22 January 1917 Lenin addressed a gathering of working youth in Zurich. Europe, he told them, was ‘pregnant with revolution’. Popular risings, led by the proletariat and ending with the ultimate victory of socialism, would come about in the ‘next few years’. But ‘we older men may not live to see the decisive battles of this imminent revolution’. However, within eight months the Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, had swept their political opponents from the field and were in sole if precarious possession of power in Russia. It was to take them several years to eliminate rival parties, and to lay the foundations of unity within their own. But the story of their struggle, which is the subject of this book, cannot be understood without a glance at the origins and faiths of the political parties mainly concerned.