REVOLUTIONARY LEADER  
The Revolution of March 1917 that overthrew the tsarist regime caught Lenin by surprise, but he managed to secure passage through Germany in a sealed train. His dramatic arrival in Petrograd (as St Petersburg had been renamed) occurred one month after rebellious workers and soldiers had toppled the tsar. The Petrograd Bolsheviks, including Joseph Stalin, had agreed with the deference the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies showed the bourgeois provisional government. Lenin immediately repudiated this line of policy. In his "April Theses" he argued that only the Soviet could respond to the hopes, aspirations, and needs of Russia's workers and peasants. Under the slogan "All Power to the Soviets", the Bolshevik party conference accepted Lenin's programme.

After an abortive workers' uprising in July, Lenin spent August and September 1917 in Finland, hiding from the provisional government. There, he formulated his concepts of a socialist government in a famous pamphlet, State and Revolution, his most important contribution to Marxist political theory. He also bombarded the party's Central Committee with demands for an armed uprising in the capital. His plan was finally accepted; it was put into effect on November 7.