The State and Revolution

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The State and Revolution

work by Lenin

Also known as: “Gosudarstvo i revolyutsiya”

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July 14, 2026

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The State and Revolution is a work by Vladimir Lenin, written in 1917, that outlines his theories on the state and revolution. Lenin, a key figure in the Russian Revolution, believed that the proletariat must smash the existing state machinery to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat." This would be a transitional phase, eventually leading to a classless, stateless communist society.1

Lenin argued that the soviets, or councils of workers, soldiers, and peasants, were a more democratic form of government than traditional parliaments. He emphasized the need for a disciplined, revolutionary party to lead the masses and seize power, believing that without revolutionary theory, there could be no revolutionary movement. The work served as a theoretical foundation for the Bolshevik seizure of power.231

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economic system
Centrally planned systems
In his pamphlet The State and Revolution, written before he came to power, Vladimir Lenin envisaged the task of coordinating a socialist economy as little more than delivering production to central collecting points from which it would be distributed according to need—an operation requiring no more than “the…
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In his pamphlet The State and Revolution, written before he came to power, Vladimir Lenin envisaged the task of coordinating a socialist economy as little more than delivering production to central collecting points from which it would be distributed according to need—an operation requiring no more than “the…
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Marxism
The dictatorship of the proletariat
…in Gosudarstvo i revolyutsiya (The State and Revolution), he set forth the conditions for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the suppression of the capitalist state.
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…in Gosudarstvo i revolyutsiya (The State and Revolution), he set forth the conditions for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the suppression of the capitalist state.
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Vladimir Lenin
Decision to seize power
…most trenchantly in his brochure The State and Revolution, written while he was still in hiding. The brochure, though never completed and often dismissed as Lenin’s most “Utopian” work, nevertheless served as Lenin’s doctrinal springboard to power.
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…most trenchantly in his brochure The State and Revolution, written while he was still in hiding. The brochure, though never completed and often dismissed as Lenin’s most “Utopian” work, nevertheless served as Lenin’s doctrinal springboard to power.
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communism
In State and Revolution (1917), Lenin asserted that socialism corresponds to Marx’s first phase of communist society and communism proper to the second. Lenin and the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party reinforced this distinction in 1918, the year after they seized power in…
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In State and Revolution (1917), Lenin asserted that socialism corresponds to Marx’s first phase of communist society and communism proper to the second. Lenin and the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party reinforced this distinction in 1918, the year after they seized power in…
Read More