generalize the lessons of struggle. The Bolsheviks passed through 15 years of struggle to combine firm principles with flexible structures and tactics -- from underground party in 1903 when there were no civil liberties, to open party during and after the revolution of 1905; boycotting elections in 1905 when they were a barrier to the revolution, then participating in Parliament when the revolutionary wave ebbed. The role of the Bolsheviks in 1917 was the opposite of a coup, as Lenin argued before October: "the government must be overthrown, but not everybody understands this correctly. So long as the provisional government has the backing of the Soviet of Worker's Deputies, you cannot 'simply' overthrow it. The only way it can and must be overthrown is by winning over the majority of the Soviets." Instead the Bolsheviks threw themselves into every struggle -- including defending the government that was persecuting them, when it was threatened by a military coup -- and through the process patiently explaining that soviets could and should take full power. Through the process the Bolsheviks earned a quarter of a million members and democratically won a majority of delegates in the soviets in Petrograd and Moscow in October -- and it was only then that they, through the soviets, organized a mass insurrection. Legacy The threat of these lessons spreading around the world -- from Azerbaijan to Alberta -- sent a panic through the global 1%, who sent a dozen invading armies to crush the revolution, while undermining