Book description
In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for
his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October
Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period
he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed
masterwork The State and Revolution. This powerfully argued book
offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights
into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal
interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his
trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions,
the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of
capitalism by the dictatorship of the proletariat. As both historical
document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated.
Translated and edited with an introduction by Robert Service
Vladimir Lenin was born in 1870 and was one of the most influential
people of the 20th century. He became a Russian revolutionary, a
communist politician, the principal leader of the October Revolution,
the first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and, from 1922,
the first
de facto
leader of the Soviet Union.
