How Did Lenin Take Power In Russia

State and Revolution seems to justify taking power from the Mensheviks by force and instituting Bolshevik party rule in Russia. This justification helps to lend legitimacy to Lenin’s government in the eyes of Russia’s citizenry. State and Revolution describes

Lenin’s distrust of ballot box reform, he saw the failure of the German Social democratic

Labor Party to reform through the ballot box as evidence to the inefficiency of the system. In Lenin’s eyes liberal elections are capitalist by nature and they do not encourage socialism.

Legitimacy was what Lenin had been seeking for his socialist vision all along.

Beginning in 1902 with What Is to Be Done? Lenin offered up his vision of how to change Russia into a legitimate socialist state, specifically his strain of Marxism. In

Both call for organization of the party into a vanguard entity to challenge the state.

Once the party was organized, power would be centralized, to conduct revolutionary activities or to challenge the existing state ultimate power, in terms of the party, lay in the hands of the men at the center. This type of power would be ominous for Russia’s future.

With the Bolshevik takeover in October 1917, Russia’s future revolved around Lenin. Lenin’s support of a centralized state was his way of shepherding

Russia through the capitalist phase of societal evolution presented by Marx. His feeling was that the party’s guidance could bring Russia rapidly through this phase and allow the country into his utopian vision for Russia. But Lenin’s centralization was the downfall of his vision; power from the center would ultimately pervert Lenin’s vision and form an authoritarian society under Joseph

Stalin.

The need for centralization was re-enforced by the beginning of Russia’s civil war in 1918. The Bolsheviks not only fought the forces that wanted to