It’s been too long since I did my reading on this to know where exactly to send you anymore (sorry) but I could clarify there was no actual plan for the German and Russian revolution to “coincide” (didn’t use that word, you’ll notice), because how would you even extract a promise to revolt in different countries at the same time, but the hope was that the Russian revolution would inspire revolutions in other countries. Which did very literally happen, although they grossly overestimated how easy it would be to unseat the governments of imperial Germany, UK, etc and the revolutions in Europe failed, at least in the places the Bolsheviks needed them to succeed. Ireland got its independence in this wave though, so that’s something!

And to be clear, there was no specific backup plan. Loose phrasing on my part. What happened after that was that Lenin, who had generally managed to hold the Bolshevik party together, died, or was assassinated, who knows, and then they fell into power squabbles, and the USSR sort of cobbled together a social system out of the wreckage after the faction Stalin wound up leading won. Then we got everything that came after.

Anyways, this is all crazy far afield of the original topic.