ABSTRACT

On March 16th the Tsar's abdication was confirmed. But Lenin belittled the event. The news had been electrifying to the revolutionaries. Some Bolsheviks living in Sweden had started for home already. Lenin assumed that it will not be possible to get away early from this damned Switzerland. Yet German diplomats already were planning the return of Lenin to Russia. It was indeed simple to plant the idea. Already in 1915 Parvus had dispatched Russian revolutionaries through Germany. The German military wanted Lenin to organize sabotage campaigns. Financial support to Lenin was probably resumed before the overthrow of the Tsar: the Germans knew through their intelligence service that major changes were impending. To everybody's surprise, Lenin, before he even reached the streets of Petrograd, had advocated a second revolution. His listeners thought the job was to turn the first revolution into success. It was this second revolution theme which induced one of the German political warfare managers to telegraph.