First published 2004
In the summer of 1917, Russia's provisional government put out a warrant for Lenin's arrest. He slipped out of St. Petersburg and spent the following months in Finland, writing what would become one of the most consequential political texts of the twentieth century. State and Revolution lays out Lenin's argument for why the existing state cannot simply be reformed or captured by workers but must be dismantled and replaced. He draws on Marx and Engels to analyze class conflict, examines what earlier revolutions got wrong, and makes the case that the dictatorship of capital must give way to a dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitional stage toward communism. Months after finishing the manuscript, Lenin returned to the city he had fled and led the October Revolution. That biographical fact gives the book unusual weight. Readers get direct access to the thinking of a man on the run who was about to remake a country. Whether approached as political theory or as a primary historical document, it offers a clear window into the ideas that drove the Russian Revolution.
Genres: history, philosophy, 20th-century, political-science, politics, non-fiction
Vibes: analytical, historically-significant, ideological, revolutionary, thought-provoking
Tropes: manifesto, primary-historical-document, theoretical-framework
Setting: Russia, St. Petersburg, Finland
Period: 1917, 20th century, Russian Revolution
116 pages · Paperback · Kessinger Publishing
Content warnings: violence