WI: Lenin isn't allowed passage to Russia?

What it says on the tin.

What if Ludedorff had deemed it too dangerous to allow Lenin and his compatriots to go to Russia?

Lenin was instrumental in the Bolsheviks ending up in power, arriving at the right time and at the right place to upset the already derailing train that was Russia in 1917.

Russia was losing the war badly at that point, with the Kerensky Offensive having turned out to be a disaster and soldiers were deserting by the millions along with the general government having to work with the Soviets and the hundred other factors that were creating instability at the time.

Would the Status Quo have stabilized? Who would win out without the Bolsheviks there to upset the turnip cart? Would a treaty like Brest-Litvosk still have been signed? Would socialism have proven to be as big of a problem in the German ranks?

I have a hundred other questions on the subject and am having trouble figuring out how big of a role Lenin and company actually played.
 
I see Russia staying in the war. Germany is in much bigger trouble when the AEF arrives. Maybe Aliied forces cross the Rhine and Corporal Hitler admits Germany lost the war.
 
While Russia may have stayed in the officially, they were finished and the Germans could have advanced as far as they wanted, then moved most of the troops west leaving a reduced force to contain the Russians. If this dissuades the Germans from doing the Michael offensive, and setting up shortened defensive lines, they may be able to force an armistice not so bad for them. No Russian revolution (Bolshevik) means may prevent fleet mutiny (especially if no death ride ordered) and troop desertions. The occupied territories might provide enough food to make a difference in staving off collapse.

Basically no matter what is done or not the Russians can't really stay in the war, the Germans did them selves a big disfavor letting Lenin through.
 
The occupied territories might provide enough food to make a difference in staving off collapse.

Agree with what you said before I started quoting you. However, and correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Russia also going through famine at the time? Add in that a lot of the territories won at Brest-Litvosk are the same areas that had been battleground for the past 3-4 years, I doubt there'd be much to take.
 
Was it really impossible for Lenin to return to Russia without German consent? Lenin's own alleged ideas about how to do so were all crazy. For example, he would pretend to be a deaf-and-dumb Swede while taking the train across Germany. Krupskaya persuaded him that he would inevitably give himself away by muttering curses against the Mensheviks in his sleep. http://www.marxists.org/archive/krupskaya/works/rol/rol21.htm (According to Adam Ulam, *The Bolsheviks,* pp. 326-7, "Hanecki, Lenin's agent in Stockholm, and a very inept liar, gives the most grotesque version: Lenin wrote him in March asking for passports of two Swedes who looked like him and Zinoviev. He and his inseparable lieutenant were going to skip through Germany as *two* deaf and dumb Swedes..." http://books.google.com/books?id=TdCK1WkconkC&pg=PA326)

It seems to be assumed that because Lenin had so violently denounced the Allied war effort, there is no way that he could have returned to Russia (legally, at least) through Allied territory. [1] But is this necessarily true? Consider the case of Trotsky. After leaving New York, he was indeed detained by British authorities in Halifax because of his anti-war views. Yet the British did ultimately decide to release him and let him return to Russia at the request of the Provisional Government, which was under heavy pressure from the Petrograd Soviet. (The position of the Soviet--reluctantly adopted by the PG--was that *all* political exiles, regardless of their stance on the war, had to be allowed to return.) So while the French government might similarly detain Lenin if he tried to travel through French territory, might it not also have decided that it had no choice but to release him? (Admittedly, Lenin had gone even further than Trotsky, actually calling for the defeat of Russia.) Of course, there would still remain the danger of Germam submarines, but if Trotsky could brave that danger, presumably Lenin could if necessary.

[1] One of the few people to question this assumption is Stefan T. Possony in *Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary*:

"Unlike other revolutionaries he did not go to the British and French consulates. He asked Safarov to lend him his passport so that he could travel through France under a false name. Yet Safarov had been disseminating defeatist propaganda to the French army. With his passport Lenin would have met with more trouble with the French authorities than if he had been traveling under his own name; preparations for the trip were discontinued.

"But presently, Lenin's old enemy, Martov, suggested at a meeting at Geneva with Bolsheviks on March 19, that the revolutionaries be permitted to pass through Germany in exchange for Austrian and German prisoners of war...This proposal was contingent upon approval by the Petrograd government.

"Martov made the unfounded assumption that France and Britain would deny passage. It was not unreasonable to expect difficulties, but the proper course of action would have been to request instructions and diplomatic and consular assistance from Petrograd. Yet Lenin and his temporary allies of Menshevik loyalty did not even consider applying for passage through allied territory, despite the fact that many Russian emigres were returning home via the West, usually in allied ships.

"The Bolsheviks and international Mensheviks, as well as the left Social Revolutionaries, the Jewish Bund, Polish socialists, and other defeatist groups had had dealings with the Central Powers...The key men in these groups, uncertain as to what extent their secret contacts had been detected, did not wish to risk indictment for espionage. The German legation believed, however, that the revolutionaries feared the sea voyage with its peril of submarine attack..." http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/pearson/lenin_36.html
 
Was it really impossible for Lenin to return to Russia without German consent? Lenin's own alleged ideas about how to do so were all crazy. For example, he would pretend to be a deaf-and-dumb Swede while taking the train across Germany. Krupskaya persuaded him that he would inevitably give himself away by muttering curses against the Mensheviks in his sleep. http://www.marxists.org/archive/krupskaya/works/rol/rol21.htm (According to Adam Ulam, *The Bolsheviks,* pp. 326-7, "Hanecki, Lenin's agent in Stockholm, and a very inept liar, gives the most grotesque version: Lenin wrote him in March asking for passports of two Swedes who looked like him and Zinoviev. He and his inseparable lieutenant were going to skip through Germany as *two* deaf and dumb Swedes..." http://books.google.com/books?id=TdCK1WkconkC&pg=PA326)

It seems to be assumed that because Lenin had so violently denounced the Allied war effort, there is no way that he could have returned to Russia (legally, at least) through Allied territory. [1] But is this necessarily true? Consider the case of Trotsky. After leaving New York, he was indeed detained by British authorities in Halifax because of his anti-war views. Yet the British did ultimately decide to release him and let him return to Russia at the request of the Provisional Government, which was under heavy pressure from the Petrograd Soviet. (The position of the Soviet--reluctantly adopted by the PG--was that *all* political exiles, regardless of their stance on the war, had to be allowed to return.) So while the French government might similarly detain Lenin if he tried to travel through French territory, might it not also have decided that it had no choice but to release him? (Admittedly, Lenin had gone even further than Trotsky, actually calling for the defeat of Russia.) Of course, there would still remain the danger of Germam submarines, but if Trotsky could brave that danger, presumably Lenin could if necessary.

[1] One of the few people to question this assumption is Stefan T. Possony in *Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary*:

"Unlike other revolutionaries he did not go to the British and French consulates. He asked Safarov to lend him his passport so that he could travel through France under a false name. Yet Safarov had been disseminating defeatist propaganda to the French army. With his passport Lenin would have met with more trouble with the French authorities than if he had been traveling under his own name; preparations for the trip were discontinued.

"But presently, Lenin's old enemy, Martov, suggested at a meeting at Geneva with Bolsheviks on March 19, that the revolutionaries be permitted to pass through Germany in exchange for Austrian and German prisoners of war...This proposal was contingent upon approval by the Petrograd government.

"Martov made the unfounded assumption that France and Britain would deny passage. It was not unreasonable to expect difficulties, but the proper course of action would have been to request instructions and diplomatic and consular assistance from Petrograd. Yet Lenin and his temporary allies of Menshevik loyalty did not even consider applying for passage through allied territory, despite the fact that many Russian emigres were returning home via the West, usually in allied ships.

"The Bolsheviks and international Mensheviks, as well as the left Social Revolutionaries, the Jewish Bund, Polish socialists, and other defeatist groups had had dealings with the Central Powers...The key men in these groups, uncertain as to what extent their secret contacts had been detected, did not wish to risk indictment for espionage. The German legation believed, however, that the revolutionaries feared the sea voyage with its peril of submarine attack..." http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/pearson/lenin_36.html

Thak you for all that :) but even if Lenin attempted to cross germany playing at being a swedish deaf-mute, it seems rather unlikely to succeed and he would definately arrive far later, so what would happen in Russia in the mean time?
 
The provisional government would probably have surrendered anyway. Following this, the Russians most likely end up electing some form of right wing government.
 
Thak you for all that :) but even if Lenin attempted to cross germany playing at being a swedish deaf-mute, it seems rather unlikely to succeed and he would definately arrive far later, so what would happen in Russia in the mean time?

Without the money that german intelligence gave the Bolsheviks I suppose their campaigning and propaganda in Russia would be far less effective.

Lenin wasn't the only German attempt to destabilize their enemies from within - billions were spent on starting a jihad among British, French and Russian muslims. While both British and French supported arab revolts against the Ottomans.
 
Without the money that german intelligence gave the Bolsheviks I suppose their campaigning and propaganda in Russia would be far less effective.

Lenin wasn't the only German attempt to destabilize their enemies from within - billions were spent on starting a jihad among British, French and Russian muslims. While both British and French supported arab revolts against the Ottomans.

This is discussed by Robert Service in his *Lenin: A Political Life, Volume Two: Worlds in Collision* (Indiana University Press 1991). He concludes that the importance of German financial support for the Bolsheviks may have been overstated (p. 251):

"...we still do not know how much money arrived in the Bolshevik exchequer. The finances of political warfare were necessarily clandestine, with officials avoiding committing many details to paper. Characters such as Alexander Parvus [one of the intermediaries between the Germans and the Bolsheviks--DT], moreover, had a well-attested liking for money, young women and the high life; it is by no means certain that all the funds at their disposal were handled scrupulously. Finances were in any case not the greatest difficulty for Russian parties in the months from March 1917. Not everything had to be paid for. The Bolshevik Central Committee obtained its premises in the Kshesinskaya Palace but paid nothing for it and ejected the owner, the ex-ballerina and court favourite M. Kshesinskaya, from her property. Nor did it have to pay for the sites of the various mass meetings through the year. The pavements outside factory gates were free of charge. Also, the 200-300,000 people who joined the Bolshevik party were expected to contribute to party funds, and *Pravda*, after its first issue, was not given away but sold. Bolshevik officials, as the party gathered political backing, were able to get paid jobs in the soviets, the trade unions and the factory-workshop committees. And the political conditions and material worries affecting workers, soldiers and sailors and disposing them to look for a radical socialist party to solve their problems existed independently of Bolshevik instigation. A German governmental subsidy may have helped the Bolsheviks, but it cannot have been 'the key' to the party's political success in 1917."

(For a contrary view of the importance of German financial aid, see Adam Ulam, *The Bolsheviks,* p. 327: "Granted Lenin's premises, his decision to accept German help was perfectly natural. It was not to affect his position an iota: he was working to bring about a new revolution in Russia, but that revolution in turn was to overthrow the German government and bring about the victory of revolutionary socialism in all Europe. The Bolsheviks needed money. Their future prodigious growth in membership and prestige between April and October was to reflect not only the skill of their leaders and the ineptitude of their opponents, but also their superior resources. They were able to spend freely on their newspapers, on full-time agitators and propagandists, and on arms for their Red Guards. These vast sums could not have come from the Party dues (in April they had but 49,000 members) or from the sale of *Pravda.* The revolutionary activities needed money, and just as in 1906 he did not hestitate to obtain it from expropriations [i.e., bank robberies--DT] so in 1917 Lenin did not scruple to get it from Germany. If he could he would have willingly accepted it from France, England, or the Romanovs." http://books.google.com/books?id=TdCK1WkconkC&pg=PA327)
 
Bolsheviks cooperate with the provisional government. The Party was in favor of this before Lenin made his speech at Finland station.
 
Bolsheviks cooperate with the provisional government. The Party was in favor of this before Lenin made his speech at Finland station.

IMO the Stalin-Kamenev line in favor of "conditional support" of the Provisional Government would not have lasted long, even if Lenin had not been around. First of all, it was by no means unanimously approved by the Bolsheviks--Molotov in particular opposed it. Second, even the "moderate" Bolsheviks did not expect the Provisional Government to last for long. Stalin, for example, warned against a premature attempt to seize power, but added "we must bide our time" until the Provisional Government discredits itself, and when that time comes "The only organ capable of taking power is the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on an all-Russian scale." Quoted in Robert M. Slusser, *Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution* (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press 1987), p. 44. Moreover, after the Mensheviks had retracted their support for a Bolshevik-inspired motion on foreign policy, even as moderate a Bolshevik as Kamenev warned that "Our task is to show that the only organ deserving our support is the Soviet of workers' deputies." Robert Service, *Lenin: A Political Life, Volume 2: Worlds in Collision* (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1991) pp. 163-4. Third, the increasing unpopularity of the PG would greatly strengthen the hands of the Left Bolsheviks against any who would still counsel moderation. (And of course Lenin even in exile could make his views known. While the more moderate Bolsheviks could at first dismiss his views by saying "Comrade Lenin is out of touch with the actual situation in Russia" eventually the increasing unpopularity of the PG would seem to vindicate Lenin.)

It is indeed likely that the Bolsheviks would have come around to the idea of a Soviet government even without Lenin, but of course that does not mean Lenin didn't make a difference: a Soviet government did not have to be--and without Lenin probably would not be--a one-party government (or one-party government with a few Left SRs as temporary camouflage). Even in OTL one is struck by the number of Bolsheviks who wanted a peaceful transfer of power to the soviets and a coalition government of all the socialist parties.
 
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