How was Lenin and the Bolsheviks able to consolidate power by 1924?
Any answer is likely to be very complicated. It was always going to be a fine run thing. Much of the activity was secret and happened in a state with poor communications. As many of the participants also ended up dead, some of what happened is lost to history. Russia was after all a complex plass with many opressed minoritys. Workers groups, religous groups and provincial nationalists were all looking for new leadership. You should understand that the tsarist regime was unpopular so could never survive. More moderate socialists had the political advantage initially but were out manouvered and out faught by the Bolsheviks. One of the problems for the moderates was that that were less united and less decisive. It could be argued that Lenin and later Hitler succeeded in gaining power, simply because they had a clear plan of action which they steadfastly put forward in a time of chaos. With existing bourgois governments having been descredited, both communism and fascism had some appeal ju
