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.
The SR’s quickly learned from local leaders that their tactics were failing them. They quickly changed tactics and let the peasant members be an inseparable entity within the party. They also relied on likeminded Decembrist exiles and their descendants who assimilated enough to be a gateway between both intellectuals, workers, and peasants. That’s part of why the Russian Far East still votes heavily for the KPRF and is a hotbed for communist organizing to this day, and also how the split in the SRs formed—declassed intellectuals and middle peasantry did not want compromise within a liberal framework.
