Why Lenin?

2.2. To what extent was Bolshevist Marxism adapted for the age of imperialism?
I think Bolshevism was fairly adapted to the conditions of imperialism and specifically to the conditions of Imperial Russia. The underlying assumption of the need for a party vanguard, as expressed by Lenin in What Is to Be Done?, is that a class of professional revolutionaries is needed to direct the energy of a revolutionary mass of people toward a political goal, using a concrete ideology such as Marxism. Lenin writes, "At this point, we wish to state only that the role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory."[1] Further underlying this assumption is that, in a country like Russia, which lacks an industrial proletariat with class consciousness, a revolution can only be successful when such a vanguard exists.

This consideration does raise the question of whether a country like Germany, which Marx saw as being the ripest ground for revolutionary socialism against an industrial bourgeoisie, would require a vanguard to mount a revolution on the order of that in Russia. Two main points of evidence argue against this viewpoint. First, the more "organic" of the changes in government in 1917, the February Revolution, seems to have lacked a party vanguard directing it, so even a revolution in a country without a formal class of professional revolutionaries could be successful, to the extent that the February Revolution could be considered successful. Second, the revolution that actually did break out in Germany in November 1918 also lacked a party vanguard directing public unrest toward a specific ideological goal. Rather, mutiny in the military culminated in the German Empire's collapse. Thus, even in other imperial age states, a vanguard might not be essential.

Perhaps then the best answer is that Leninism/Bolshevism was adapted for the imperial age in the specific national context of Russia and the specific period of the Provisional Government, but not for the age of imperialism generally. In so far as the ideological goal of a revolution led by a vanguard would be the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletaria, we must consider the Bolshevik seize of power successful.

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[1] V.I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement in Collected Works, volume 5, translated by Joe Fineberg and George Hanna (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm, emphasis in original.