Lenin asks whether the Bolsheviks can retain state power

The theses called for no support to the Provisional Government, transfer of power to soviets, land redistribution, and an end to the war. They reframed Bolshevik policy around immediate popular...

Workers and soldiers demonstrated amid war, shortages, and political crisis. The Bolshevik leadership tried to shape but did not initiate all the actions; after the protests were suppressed, Lenin...

Lenin revisited Marx and Engels on the state, arguing that a workers’ revolution must dismantle the existing bureaucratic-military apparatus. The theory’s promise of popular self-government later...

Lenin proposed public control of banks, monopolies, and supply as measures to address economic breakdown. The text placed economic planning at the center of the revolutionary programme; its...

In letters to party leaders, Lenin argued that the political moment demanded an uprising. Other Bolsheviks debated timing and strategy; the eventual transfer of power depended on soviet support,...

The Military Revolutionary Committee and armed workers and soldiers occupied key sites and displaced the Provisional Government during the Second Congress of Soviets. This event, called the October...

The new Soviet government issued a peace appeal and a land decree that drew on peasant demands and Socialist Revolutionary proposals. These measures addressed urgent popular grievances, while the...

After elections in which the Socialist Revolutionaries won more votes nationally, Bolshevik leaders dissolved the Assembly following a brief session. The Bolsheviks argued that soviets expressed a...

Facing German military advances, the Soviet government signed a treaty ceding extensive territories and populations. Lenin defended the severe terms as necessary to preserve the revolution, while...

Lenin called for labor discipline, productivity measures, specialists, and administrative coordination as the new state faced economic collapse. The argument shows how wartime pressures shifted policy...