The Bolsheviks took power in Russia because the parties of the Provisional Government had discredited themselves through their inability to end the war. In Germany it was the armistice itself that led to the revolution. If we imagine an alternate universe where the SPD leadership have lobotomies and decide to continue the war for another year and the German army disintegrates then I suppose the German communists may have had a shot.
Related: why was the Russian peasantry so left wing relative to the "sack of potatoes" of Marx's description? Was it just a mass failure of the Stolypin reforms?
Desire for land basically, yeah. And widespread illiteracy and remoteness from the state equalling an absence of active patriotic sentiment.
True, but it's remarkable how quickly SR agitation seemed to cover up the sort of cultural prochialism seen in the initial "going to the people" nihilist movement.
