How did the Bolsheviks come to power in 1917?

This is a fully-resourced lesson which will help your class understand the reasons the Bolsheviks came to power. Please note though that this lesson does not cover the weaknesses of the Provisional Government (that is done in a previous lesson) but instead focuses solely on the strengths of the Bolsheviks and Lenin.

The lesson includes learning objectives which are broken into all of you / some of you / most of you will and begins with a starter activity designed to encourage students to consider a range of different historiographical perspectives on the importance of Lenin and the Bolsheviks (Pipes, Merridale, McMeekin etc). From here the class work through background notes before attempting a Diamond 9 activity where they place different factors into a sequence with the most important at the top and the least important at the bottom. After this students are prepared to complete an assessed piece of written work and a detailed and graduated rubric is provided for this based on the second order concept of interpretation. The lesson concludes with a plenary where students are asked to vote on which side of the historiographical debate they side with.

I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as mine do and please do let me know if you have any questions. This lesson is pitched towards high-achieving secondary aged students.