The State and Revolution is considered to be Lenin's most important work on the state and has been called by Lucio Colletti 'Lenin's greatest contribution to political theory'. In one of the most controversial actions of the early Soviet government, the constitutional convention was dissolved on January 20, 1918. A particular issue that Lenin covers in The State and Revolution was the right of nations to secession ('the right to self determination') during the composition of this book, the Mensheviks of Georgia declared independence soon after the Revolution, forming the Democratic Republic of Georgia.īy November 25, the 1917 Constitutional Assembly was elected, with a majority of positions going to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which had made a right-ward turn after the revolution with most of the Left-SRs joining the Bolshevik party. The revolution was not uniformly accepted among all Russians resistance and disruption would occur routinely leading up to the Russian Civil War. Through the Red Guards, paramilitary organizations of revolutionary workers, sailors and soldiers the Soviet government was able to storm the Winter Palace and officially abolish the Provisional Government. On November 7, the Congress of Soviets officially elected a coalition of Bolsheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to govern.

The Russian public was deeply upset with the continuation of Russia's involvement in World War I and the continued economic difficulties that it brought on.

' Soviets', legislative bodies of workers and peasants were the de facto governments of Petrograd and many smaller cities.

Lenin began the composition of an early draft of The State and Revolution while in exile in Switzerland in 1916, under the title 'Marxism on the State'. The State and Revolution (1917) is a book by Vladimir Lenin describing the role of the state in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Vladimir lenin state and revolution