Leninism in the context of "Revolutionary socialist"

The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social change in Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government following two successive revolutions and a civil war. It can be seen as the precursor for other revolutions that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, such as the German Revolution of 1918–1919. The Russian Revolution was a key event of the 20th century.

The Russian Revolution was inaugurated with the February Revolution in 1917, in the midst of World War I. With the German Empire inflicting defeats on the front, and increasing logistical problems causing shortages of bread and grain, the Russian Army was losing morale, with large scale mutiny looming. Officials were convinced that if Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, the unrest would subside. Nicholas stepped down on 15 March [O.S. 2 March], ushering in a provisional government led by the Duma (parliament). During the unrest, Soviet councils were formed by locals in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) that initially did not oppose the new government; however, the Soviets insisted on their influence in the government and control over militias. By March, Russia had two rival governments. The Provisional Government held state power in military and international affairs, whereas the network of Soviets held domestic power. Critically, the Soviets held the allegiance of the working class, and urban middle class. There were mutinies, protests and strikes. Socialist and other leftist political organizations competed for influence within the Provisional Government and Soviets. Factions included the Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, Anarchists, and the Bolsheviks, a far-left party led by Vladimir Lenin.

The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the Second Party Congress in 1903. The Bolshevik party, formally established in 1912, seized power in Russia in the October Revolution of 1917 and was later renamed the Russian Communist Party, All-Union Communist Party, and ultimately the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Its ideology, based on Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist principles, became known as Bolshevism.

The origin of the RSDLP split was Lenin's support for a smaller party of professional revolutionaries, as opposed to the Menshevik desire for a broad party membership. The influence of the factions fluctuated in the years up to 1912, when the RSDLP formally split in two. The political philosophy of the Bolsheviks was based on the Leninist principles of vanguardism and democratic centralism. Lenin was also more willing to use illegal means such as robbery to fund the party's activities. By 1917, influenced by the experiences of World War I, he reached the conclusion that the chain of world capitalism could "break at its weakest link" in Russia before it assumed the level of the advanced countries, opposing theorists such as Georgi Plekhanov. Lenin had also come to view poorer peasants as potential allies of the relatively small Russian proletariat.

Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an interpretation of Marxism distinct from classical and Orthodox Marxism and the Marxism–Leninism of the Soviet Union.

Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to investigating culture and historical development. Key themes included the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on Karl Marx's thought, and the recovery of the "Young Marx," emphasizing his early, humanistic writings.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. As the founder of the Bolsheviks, Lenin led the October Revolution, which established the world's first communist state. His government won the Russian Civil War and created a one-party state under the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.

Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics after his brother was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate the Russian tsar. He was expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in student protests, and earned a law degree before moving to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and becoming a prominent Marxist activist. In 1897, Lenin was exiled to Siberia for three years, after which he moved to Western Europe and became a leading figure in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1903, the party split between Lenin's Bolshevik faction and the Mensheviks, with Lenin advocating for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat in establishing socialism. Lenin briefly returned to Russia during the Revolution of 1905. During the First World War he campaigned for its transformation into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution. After the February Revolution of 1917 ousted Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin returned to Russia and played a leading role in the October Revolution.

Marxism–Leninism (Russian: марксизм-ленинизм, romanized: marksizm-leninizm) is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the communist movement in the world in the years following the October Revolution. It was the predominant ideology of most communist governments throughout the 20th century. It was developed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by Joseph Stalin and drew on elements of Bolshevism, Leninism, and Marxism. It was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, Soviet satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various countries in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War, as well as the Communist International after Bolshevization.

Today, Marxism–Leninism is the de jure ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, as well as many other communist parties. The state ideology of North Korea is derived from Marxism–Leninism, although its evolution is disputed.

Bolshevism (derived from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and establishing the "dictatorship of the proletariat".

Bolshevism originated at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and was associated with the activities of the Bolshevik faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party led by Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevism's main theorist. Other theoreticians included Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky. While Bolshevism was based on Marxist philosophy, it also absorbed elements of the ideology and practice of the socialist revolutionaries of the second half of the 19th century (Sergey Nechaev, Pyotr Tkachev, Nikolay Chernyshevsky) and was influenced by Russian agrarian socialist movements like the Narodniks.