What Lenin Means When He Say That The 1905 Revolution

What Lenin Means When He Says that the 1905 Revolution was a Dress Rehearsal

Lenin believed that a number of specific requirements (relating to his adaptations of Marx) needed to be fulfilled by the separate social classes and the Bolsheviks themselves.

The main reason why the 1905 revolution was deemed to be a dress rehearsal by Lenin was because there was no unity between the masses and the political parties and no unity within the political parties themselves.

Although the political parties shared the same ultimate goal of overthrowing the existing order of autocracy, they were divided from one another. The Liberals, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks and the Social Revolutionaries had different

The internal division within each party immensely weakened the strength of its struggle against autocracy.

Lenin followed the events inside Russia closely. He revised his revolutionary theory. He drew the conclusion that the peasantry should be sought after as one of the main revolutionary forces in future revolutions. Trotsky also saw the value of the soviet as a form of popular government and the use of a general strike to bring down a government.

To successfully revolutionise, the “masses” needed guidance from a political party.

The masses were the main driving force of the 1905 Revolution. But the masses were not properly led by the political parties to seize power. Lenin strongly believed in the idea of Vanguardism. This would be a small group of leaders who could enact a revolution from above. Thus, the 1905 revolution was a dress rehearsal because the masses had no guide for advancement.

Linked to this problem was the fact that the political programmes of the political parties failed to secure wholehearted support from