On completion of their seizure of power in Russia's two capital cities, in November 1917, Lenin and his associates found themselves faced with two outstanding problems, both dangerously urgent. One was the need for consolidating and extending to the remainder of the country the power they now so tenuously held in the great urban centres. The other was the need for a clarification of the relationship of the new revolutionary Russia to the world war, then at the apex of its intensity. Russia was, after all, a belligerent; hostilities were still in progress; the situation could brook no delay.

The political grouping on which Lenin based his power—the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party—could scarcely have numbered at that time much more than 70,000 members in a country of some 160 million. This tiny following was concentrated largely in the great cities and a few outlying industrial communities. Although they had by this time gained control of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, the Bolsheviki could not claim a majority even within the socialist component of the Russian political spectrum as a whole; and this component embraced only about half of the country's voting population. In the ranks of organised labour, in particular, their support was small, though increasing. In extensive outlying regions, such as the Caucasus and Siberia, they had only the merest smattering of followers.