True, but he was soooo incompetent!
I don't take the word of the Bolsheviks on that. The problem in WWI for the Russian Empire was, Germany had taken 20 years to redevelop and modernize its armed forces, because contingency planners had identified problems -- such as, if war were to break out, the country could very well be numerically outnumbered perhaps 4 to 1, and fighting on multiple fronts. Russia, by contrast, was a society medieval peasants and much less industry than the European norm. Would have been better to hold a big summit meeting to prevent the shooting war from starting, or just remain a noncombatant (that would probably have prevented the outbreak just as effectively).