Summary

As Danielle discusses in her post "Russian Revolution!!!", the Bolsheviks were "able to come to power due to the instability of Russia and the overall political and social CHAOS!!". I agree with this point entirely--the Bolsheviks proposed a solution to such chaos in the seemingly stable Soviet governmental system. I do not think that it is difficult to say whether or not the Communist Revolution would have been so successful if Russia had been more stable--the revolution was so greatly dependent on the support of the proletariat that ONLY such a state of chaos (and consequently desperation) facilitated the implementation of the Soviet government. This essentially follows the Marxist understanding that a communist revolution would inevitably occur due to contradiction and civil warfare, except that the fall of the English and French systems had not yet occurred. The proletariat were desperate to be acknowledged by their government, and the Soviet government appealed to that desire, offering a breath of fresh air amongst such chaos and instability. The Bolsheviks sympathized with the discontent of the Russian army and forfeited tremendous amounts of territory in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) just to get out of WWI. The Bolsheviks (somewhat) stabilized the discontentment of the peasants by randomly distributing the land of the nobility without requiring compensations of any sort, and, in giving the workers control within the workplace, appealed to the workers as well. Essentially, I entirely agree with what Danielle said. The fact that Russia was in such a great state of chaos worked well with the fact that the Bolshevik party wanted to entirely change the foundations of Russia, because the state of chaos provided the proletariat with a reason to embrace this change.