Western Oregon University Digital Commons@WOU Student Theses, Papers and Projects (History) Department of History 2007 Leninism: Pathway to Dictatorship? Michael Anderson Western Oregon University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/his Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Anderson, Michael, "Leninism: Pathway to Dictatorship?" (2007). Student Theses, Papers and Projects (History). 179. https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/his/179 This Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at Digital Commons@WOU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Theses, Papers and Projects (History) by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@WOU. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. - 1 - Leninism: Pathway to Dictatorship? By Samuel Aubrey Summers Senior Seminar: Hst 499 Professor Bau-Hwa Hsieh Western Oregon University June 7, 2007 Readers Professor David Doellinger Professor Dean Braa Copyright © Michael Anderson, 2007 - 2 - Vladimir Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? and State and Revolution laid the foundation for a centralist dictatorship in Russia. In both of these documents, Lenin outlines plans to create a Marxist state in Russia. Lenin faced the difficulty of an agrarian society with a small working class ruled by a 300 year-old autocracy. Lenin wrote What Is to Be Done? in 1903 as an outline of how to educate an agrarian society and introduce socialism. By July 1917, when he wrote State and Revolution, Russia was in the middle of World War One and the autocracy had crumbled. In the fifteen years between the two documents, Lenin faced challenges to his leadership within the party, and an increasingly chaotic political scene in Russia.