Bolshevik Rivals

A major factor (atleast in what I've learned please do correct me) in the october revolution was that the Bolsheviks were the only party in the public eye to want peace.

Now what would happen if another perhaps equally as powerful party (Mensheviks?) wanted peace and that that party was turned to in the times of crisis and the bonuses Lenin and the Bolsheviks received given to another party?

What would happen then?, without the dominence of a single party?
 

Hnau

Banned
I've done significant study on the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Narodnik movement was much more popular than the Marxist movement, but the problem was that the leading party of the Narodnik movement, the SRs, never split into opposing camps as the Marxist movement did. This seems illogical, that a divided party would be more successful, but really, the great majority of the SR membership wanted immediate peace, but they were forced to concede time and time again to the smaller right-wing.

If there had been a passionate individual like Lenin to galvanize the Left-SRs early on and split from the rest of the party, instead of in 1917, they would most definitely be successful in taking control of Russia. However, the Russian revolutionary period was fortunate in that the anti-war revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks, were exclusive in their program demanding an immediate armistice. If there were two, they will most likely cooperate with each other until the Russian Civil War, in which they would use their newfound power to try and wrest the country away from the other. If the Left-SRs were strengthened by 1917 to stand on their own feet, by 1918 they will be locked in a struggle for the socialist revolutionary core of Russia with the Bolsheviks. This would most likely mean the White Armies would succeed in taking Petrograd and Moscow to claim victory.
 
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