The linked Hitchens blog post is filled with a number of outdated ideas, oversimplifications, and bad history. Let's take a look at a few of the ones that scream out.

Berlin invented a pseudo ‘Kingdom of Poland’ to try to win over Poles who lived under direct Russian tyranny. Then came the collapse of Imperial Russia (brought about by the Bolshevik putsch in Petrograd, financed by German gold and prepared by the German agent Ulyanov, codenamed ‘Lenin’, smuggled into Russia under the supervision of the German general staff).

The issue about the resurrection of a Kingdom of Poland is an incredibly complicated one and one in which Germany, as well as the Austro-Hungarians and the Russians, all toyed around with at some point during the war. Hitchens gets the fundamental rationale behind this resurrection roughly correct (undermine the enemy) but presenting it as a Berlin-only affair is vastly oversimplifying matters. All three of these imperial powers in Eastern Europe recognized that the national issue was a weapon, but also one that could be used against their own imperial interests.

As for the Bolshevik Revolution and Lenin, well, Hitchens is just engaging in something that would not be out of place in r/badhistory. One of the charges filed against Lenin by the emigres from the Provisional Government after the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War was that he was a German agent and the Bolshevik takeover of the government in Petrograd was financed with German gold. This was a stock characterization that was once quite common in the historical literature on 1917 which was often based upon limited sources, often from the emigres themselves. Starting in the 1970s, historical scholarship has moved on from this conspiratorial portrayal of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Historians like Sheila Fitzpatrick and Alexander Rabinowitch, often called Revisionists, have shown that the October Revolution was less of a "putsch" but was reflective of the internal decay of the Provisional Government and widespread dissatisfaction among the masses with the Provisional Government's tendency to hem and haw over crucial issues.

Calling Lenin a "German agent" is pretty much nonsensical and again treating political slander as fact. Lenin was one of several very prominent Russian revolutionaries living abroad during the war and he had a long and established record of revolutionary activism prior to 1917. As was not uncommon for a number of Russian revolutionaries, he took on a pseudonym, in this case Lenin, in 1901. Hitchens's blog post implies that this "code name" was given to him as a part of Germany's effort to sabotage the Russian Provisional Government, which is factually incorrect. The historical reality behind the famous sealed train is much more prosaic and far less of a fodder for an Ian Fleming novel. Lenin, along with several other exiled Russian revolutionaries, wanted to return to Russia in light of the downfall of the tsar. Recognizing that they would have to go through one of the belligerent powers' territory to do so, they recognized that the Central Powers would be more amenable to these overtures than the Entente. At this point in the war Germany was supporting pretty much any radical group that could overturn the Provisional Government, and focused heavily upon the Socialist Revolutionaries (SR). Lenin was a member of just one of several radical groups operating at this time and not surprisingly the Germans were amenable to the overtures of these exiles in Switzerland. The reality behind the "sealed train" is also quite dull. Although Soviet historiography would portray the locking of exits as a sign that the Germans recognized Lenin's paramount importance and were trying to quarantine revolution, this measure was mainly for the Bolsheviks' sake as it prevented them from being charged with treason by the Provisional Government once they returned to Russia. The train's passengers could move freely on the train and were able to exit at some train stops to buy newspapers and beer. These types of misinterpretations and exaggerations are really reflective of someone who has not read either current scholarship on 1917 or has only read selectively.

Germany’s intervention, and its decision to hire Lenin, was not idealistic and didn't even pretend to be (as its equivalent would nowadays) . The Bolshevik putsch followed the February revolution, a genuine political convulsion from below, which had overthrown the Romanovs and would have led to a constituent assembly, elected by what is almost certainly still the most free and democratic poll ever to have taken place in Russia. The Bolshevik coup destroyed the first non-autocratic government Russia had ever had, as that government wished to continue the war against Germany.

To be fair to Hitchens, this is an argument that some historians have made quite recently, most notably Adam Tooze's recent book The Deluge. The problem for Hitchens, as well as Tooze's rather disappointing and deeply flawed book, is the notion of the Bolsheviks strangling a nascent democracy is at best a gross oversimplification of a very complicated affair. While the Constituent Assembly elections of November 1917 were actually relatively open and fair, especially given the conditions they were conducted, they were also deeply flawed. The election ballots made no account for the split in the SR, which had emerged as one of the major power blocs within the post-February political landscape. The list for the elections favored the Right SRs, who were largely anti-Soviet, at the expense of the Left SRs who had a great deal of support among both the peasantry and urban Soviets. There was a great deal of popular discontent over this and the Revisionists have pointed out that the Bolsheviks were able to capitalize upon this popular sentiment in their seizure of power.

Hitchens's throwaway line "as that government wished to continue the war against Germany," itself is an indication that he does not really understand the history of 1917. The Provisional Government's insistence on carrying on the war was one of its most unpopular decisions and hung like an albatross around its neck. By the middle of 1917, the war was incredibly unpopular among large swaths of the Russian populace and the Provisional Government's shifting rationales to stay in the war fell on deaf ears. The Provisional Government's summer offensive of 1917 had collapsed and the ongoing disintegration of the imperial army was a sign that the fortunes of war had not shifted. The decision by the Provisional Government to stay belligerent was emblematic of its tendency to prevaricate on contentious decisions and try to postpone hard decisions. There were a whole host of major reform issues on the table such as the land issue and the Provisional Government pretty much treated them as secondary until the war was over. This created a widespread disenchantment with the Provisional Government and the abortive right -wing coup (the Kornilov affair) in August further undermined the credibility of the Provisional Government despite the elections. Rather than operating alone, the Bolsheviks were part of a much larger movement to take the course of the revolution into their own hands. In the Russian countryside, the Black Repartitions of noble estates and the redistribution of land was happening without any real sanction from the Provisional Government. In short, there as a widespread sentiment in Russia between the two revolutions against the Provisional Government and in many cases, the Provisional Government dug itself into a deeper hole with its procrastination on major issues. Although it is dangerous to treat the Bolsheviks as the natural heirs of this chaotic situations, there is a good deal of truth to Lenin's statement that "Power was lying on the street – we merely stooped down to pick it up."

While this critique of Hitchens (and by extension, Tooze who pretty much based his Russia chapters on a very narrow reading of 1917) may seem a bit pedantic, the Revisionist historiography that emphasizes the popular nature of the Bolsheviks is far from new scholarship. Presenting the Bolsheviks as a narrow clique usurping power from a democratically-elected government is a narrative that is really unsustainable. The Provisional Government was an explicitly temporary government and it had repeatedly proved itself unable t govern or weigh in on issues that really mattered to a majority of the empire, such as continuing the war or the land issue.