Hello, and thank you for listening to the history of World War II podcast, Episode 184,

the question of peace, Lenin and Stalin vs Trotsky.

Last time the Lenin-led Bolshevik faction, currently trying to rule Russia, was suffering

from the people's reaction to the extremism that he, Lenin, was helping to incite.

Yes, it gave him cover for the violence and the lack of progress, but as the common people

were now becoming the victims of the temporary, all-Russia, extraordinary commission for combating

counter-revolution in sabotage, or Czecha, the leader was losing the very base he was counting

on to overcome all other opposition, and this couldn't have come at a worse time.

Just before the provisional government fizzled out of existence, it had slated general elections

for November 12, 1917, the same elections that they had been promising since March, that

had they carried out, might have saved that body's very existence.

Yet they had feared leading commoners, soldiers, and sailors have the power to choose who would

run the country, but it seemed that was going to happen anyway. Be that as it may, Lenin had

decided to allow the elections to move forward, if only because it would silence his many

opponents that his was a dictatorship in the making. It was, but hopefully this election

could be used as further cover. And now that the election was a go, and its time was coming close,

the majority of Lenin's Bolsheviks jumped to it, with organizing and, quite frankly,

trashing all others who were also running. They really did believe they had a shot at legitimately

winning the power they had stolen. Of course, at the center of the propaganda was Lenin's newspapers,

and that meant Stalin. The socialist revolutionaries, not with the Lenin faction,

were labeled wolves and sheep clothing. The Bolsheviks were slaves of the bourgeoisie,

clearing the path for counter-revolution, and the constitutional democrats, capitalist pillagers.

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