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discussed in biography
- In Vladimir Lenin: Formation of a revolutionary party of Vladimir Lenin
  In his What Is To Be Done? (1902), Lenin totally rejected the standpoint that the proletariat was being driven spontaneously to revolutionary Socialism by capitalism and that the party’s role should be to merely coordinate the struggle of the proletariat’s diverse sections on a national and international…
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revolutionary literature
- In Russia: Education and ideas
  …and sketched more realistically in What Is to Be Done? by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, in 1902, was not entirely due to the circumstances of the underground political struggle. The revolutionaries were formed also by their sense of mission, by their absolute conviction that they knew best…
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In political philosophy: Lenin
Already in What Is to Be Done? (1902), Lenin had argued that an educated elite had to direct the proletarian revolution, and, when he came to power, he dissolved the constituent assembly and ruled through a “revolutionary and democratic dictatorship supported by the state power of the…
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communism
- In communism: Bolshevism: Lenin’s revolutionary communism
  The first, set out in What Is to Be Done? (1902), was that revolution could not and should not be made spontaneously by the proletariat, as Marx had expected, but had to be made by workers and peasants led by an elite “vanguard” party composed of radicalized middle-class intellectuals like…
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Marxism
- In Marxism: Lenin
  …his pamphlet Chto delat? (1902; What Is to Be Done?), he specified the theoretical principles and organization of a Marxist party as he thought it should be constituted. He took part in the second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, which was held in Brussels and London (1903), and…
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socialism
- In socialism: Revisionism and revolution
  …of the proletariat, arguing in What Is to Be Done? (1902) that the workers, left to themselves, would fight only for better wages and working conditions; they therefore needed to be educated, enlightened, and led to revolution by a “vanguard” party of professional revolutionaries. Moreover, the authoritarian nature of the…
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propaganda
- In propaganda: Connotations of the term propaganda
  …Ilich Lenin in a pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902), in which he defined “propaganda” as the reasoned use of historical and scientific arguments to indoctrinate the educated and enlightened (the attentive and informed publics, in the language of today’s social sciences); he defined “agitation” as the use of…
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