The April Theses and The State and Revolution

Lenin arrived in Petrograd from political exile in Switzerland on April 3 (16), 1917. In the Bolshevik organ of Pravda on April 7 (20), 1917, he published his Bolshevik Party program for a revolutionary strategy that was to prevail until the Bolshevik seizure of political power on October 25 (November 7), 1917. Formally published as The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution , the program is popularly known as Lenin’s April Theses (henceforth referred to as the April Theses ).In Thesis (1) Lenin declared that “without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.” 1 This first thesis has reference to the shift in emphasis from Great Russian chauvinism as the Tsarist motivation for Russia’s participation in the war to the Kadet capitalist profits as a bourgeois partner in Anglo-French imperialist capital. In Thesis (3) Lenin added that Bolsheviks must expose the “illusion-breeding ‘demand’ that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.” 2 From this, Lenin argued that the Provisional Revolutionary Government must be completely deposed with the call of: “All Power to the Soviets.” These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.