Lenins Return

The Return of Lenin 

• At the time of the Feb/March Revolution the Bolsheviks were still only a small party of 23,000 members.
• They only had 40 representatives in the Soviet of 1500 and all their major leaders were in exile.
• The first leaders to reach Petrograd were Lev Kamenev and Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvily (Stalin) who arrived in mid-march and took over the control of the party newspaper, Pravda (The Truth).
• They accepted the policy adopted by other left-wing socialists to support the PG, the continuation of the war and the Soviet leadership.
• It was only after Lenin returned from Switzerland on the 3/16th April, that the Bolsheviks began to forge their own path
• • The turn of events in Feb had caught Lenin by surprise and he had to enlist the…