Yes. Specifically to "count their numbers" as a means to gage their overall support. There were also legal benefits that came with electoral status, such as party immunity for Pravda, their party paper. The electoral process was also needlessly complicated and highly undemocratic. The Tsar wanted nothing to do with the Duma, it was basically symbolic. Eventually the Tsar broke its own promises of immunity, which was a catalyst for advancing the revolutionary movement.

Counting your numbers still has value. Under American electoralism you have the potential for free messaging through interviews and debates that allow you to spread your socialist agenda. Compared to the Tsarist system, American electoralism is vastly more democratic, but obfuscates its most undemocratic elements by the massive influence money plays in your reach and success. Despite that, it allows you to recruit "professional revolutionaries" into the party, and use electoralism as a means of educating the backward masses on what socialism actually is.

but maoist