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I'm currently reading Tony Brenton's Was Revolution Inevitable, a series of essays on possible counterfactuals around the Russian Revolution. In it, Orlando Figes speculates about the Congress of Soviets (October 25, 1917) leading to an all-socialist coalition government, something David T has written about as well. Figes suggests as a POD, Lenin being arrested on the way to Tauride Palace. IRL, he was stopped by government police officers but was mistaken for a drunk and let pass, where he wound up rallying the Bolsheviks to seize power in advance of the Congress meeting. Figes suggests that had the Bolshevik coup not occurred, the likely result would have been the Congress of Soviets endorsing an all-socialist coalition led by Lev Kamanev with a Bolshevik plurality. He suspects there would still have been a short civil war at least against Kerensky and the forces of the provisional government but ultimately Figes doesn't speculate much beyond the thought that this would have led to a less ruinous outcome for Russia.

So what do people think would have happened? Might such a government still have devolved into a Leninist-Bolshevik dictatorship anyway? Or might Lenin have split with the Bolsheviks given SR and Menshevik participation? If it remained in power, what might a Kamenev-led government have done regarding the war? Would it have agreed to a quick peace that ceded the Germans Poland, Lithuania, and the Courland? How would it have handled the Constituent Assembly? And is there any possibility here of a democratic system emerging? Or perhaps a left-wing dictatorship but a nominally pluralist one?
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