The Bolsheviks--Or, We'll Get By With a Little Help From Our "Friends"…

There are a number of folks who argued that it was “inevitable” or “nearly inevitable” that the Bolsheviks should win the debate (even if the Octobrists put up a good fight). The ball got rolling with Major Tom, the “divine arbiter”:

“The Bolsheviks were the most radical group of all the three, and had the distinct advantage of having the future on their side. They were arguing that in 1905 the time is ripe for a revolution, since the peasantry has just had its bond with the Czar broken by Bloody Sunday.”

Makaveli says:
" So, in summary, the debate was rigged from the beginning (as Charlie has admitted on his summation) and the Mensheviks were headed towards failure from the start."

MLC asserts similarly:
“It was sort of inevitable that the Bolsheviks would win the debate, though I do have much respect for the Octoberists.”

And then, The Midnight Ponderer adds in her claim that:

“There was really no other direction to go in. The Tsars and their governments were corrupt and had been for a while, as many of you addressed in your blogs. Russia, in order for it to become and remain a world power needed to immediately oust the tradition and "backward-ness" of the past and move into the future, which is what the Bolsheviks wanted and is why they, of course, will always win.”

I wonder about the possibility of the excluded middle. Why do we have to EITHER have a dictatorship of the masses OR a dictatorship of one (i.e., the Tsar)? Why was Russia’s experiment with representative democracy in the February Revolution of 1917, which led to the formation of the Russian Provisional Government, a failure? I think a key item in answering that question revolves around what they did not do—get out of the war, which was destroying the country. Maybe it was because the Bolshevik platform was so uncompromising on this issue. After all, Lenin, being a true believer, thought that after the war, the Communist revolution would come (sparked by Bolshevik revolutionary fervour and dedicated cadres—after all, if you can get a communist revolution in backwards Russia, it will be a SNAP!!! To get it in advanced industrialized Britain and Germany) and all the land that Russia had given up in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk would be handed back.

PS. I just came across JED's analysis; what do you think?