"One hundred years ago this week, in the midst of unprecedented devastation and growing signs of working class unrest throughout Europe, Lenin follows his return to Petrograd with an unexpected declaration of war against a section of the leadership of his own party, which is still a minority in the soviets. Trotsky later refers to Lenin’s campaign inside the party, which opened with the publication of the April Theses, as the “struggle for the rearming of the Bolshevik ranks."