Lénine livre L'État et la Révolution
L'État et la Révolution, 1917
Vladimir Ilitch Oulianov , dit Lénine , né à Simbirsk le 22 avril 1870 et mort à Vichnie Gorki le 21 janvier 1924, est un révolutionnaire, théoricien politique et homme d'État russe. Rejoignant à la fin du XIXe siècle le Parti ouvrier social-démocrate de Russie, la section russe de la Deuxième Internationale, il provoque en 1903 une scission du Parti russe et devient l'un des principaux dirigeants du courant bolchevik. Auteur d'une importante œuvre écrite d'inspiration marxiste, il se distingue par ses conceptions politiques qui font du parti l'élément moteur de la lutte des classes et de la dictature du prolétariat.
En 1917, après l'effondrement du tsarisme, les bolcheviks s'emparent du pouvoir en Russie lors de la Révolution d'Octobre. La prise du pouvoir par Lénine donne naissance à la Russie soviétique, premier régime communiste de l'histoire, autour de laquelle se constitue ensuite l'URSS. Lénine et les bolcheviks parviennent à assurer la survie de leur régime, malgré leur isolement international et un contexte de guerre civile. Ambitionnant d'étendre la révolution au reste du monde, Lénine fonde en 1919 l'Internationale communiste : il provoque à l'échelle mondiale une scission de la famille politique socialiste et la naissance en tant que courant distinct du mouvement communiste, ce qui contribue à faire de lui l'un des personnages les plus importants de l'histoire contemporaine,.
Une fois au pouvoir, il use — de façon revendiquée, — de la Terreur afin de parvenir à ses fins politiques. Lénine est à l'origine de la Tchéka, police politique soviétique chargée de traquer et d'éliminer tous les ennemis du nouveau régime qu'il met en place. De même, Lénine instaure en 1919 un système de camps de travail forcé, qui précède le Goulag de l'époque stalinienne, ; il fait également du nouveau régime une dictature à parti unique. La continuité politique entre Lénine et Staline fait l'objet de débats ; divers auteurs ont cependant souligné que la philosophie politique et la pratique du pouvoir de Lénine contenaient des éléments clés de la dictature au sens moderne du terme, voire du totalitarisme,.
Dès mars 1923, Lénine est définitivement écarté du jeu politique par la maladie ; il meurt en début d'année suivante. Staline sort ensuite vainqueur de la rivalité qui oppose les dirigeants soviétiques en vue de la succession. Les idées de Lénine sont, après sa mort, synthétisées au sein d'un corpus doctrinal baptisé léninisme, qui donne ensuite naissance au marxisme-léninisme, idéologie officielle de l'URSS et de l'ensemble des régimes communistes durant le XXe siècle.

Lénine livre L'État et la Révolution
L'État et la Révolution, 1917
Édition sociale, Tome 33, 1959 (textes de 1921)
Lénine livre L'État et la Révolution
L'État et la Révolution, 1917
Lénine livre La Maladie infantile du communisme
La Maladie infantile du communisme (le « gauchisme »), 1920
Conclusion de l'article « La Commune de Paris et les tâches de la dictature démocratique», in Prolétari n°8 du 17 juillet 1905
Édition sociale, Tome 33, 1959 (textes de 1921)
Lénine livre L'État et la Révolution
L'État et la Révolution, 1917
Mieux vaut moins, mais mieux, 1923
Édition sociale, Tome 33, 1959 (textes de 1921)
Source: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: Full Text of 1916 Edition
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1900s
Contexte: Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views.
Address to the Party Central Committee (14 May 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 365-381.
1910s
As quoted in Revolutionary Fascism, Erik Norling, Lisbon, Finis Mundi Press (2011) p. 28. Lenin express this to Nicola Bombacci during a reception in the Kremlin.
1920s
Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Three
Contexte: All the rules of control, the publication of balance sheets, the drawing up of balance sheets according ot a definite form, the public auditing of accounts, the things about which well-intentioned professors and officials - that is, those imbued with he good intention of defending and embellishing capitalism - discourse to the public, are of no avail. For private property is sacred, and no one can be prohibited from buying, selling, exchanging or mortgaging shares, etc.
“Imperialism: The final stage of Capitalism.”
Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Seven
Contexte: We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly.
Collected Works, Vol. 41, pp. 262–66
Collected Works
“Lessons of the Commune”, in Zagranichnaya Gazeta, No. 2 (23 March 1908) http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm, as translated by Bernard Isaacs, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 478. <br class="br">1900s <br class="br">Variante: The proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of struggle — they serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolution — but it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the December uprising.
Source: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908), p. 130
Vladimir Lenin livre L'État et la Révolution
France and America
1.3: The State as an Instrument for the Exploitation of The Oppressed Class, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)
What is to be Done? (1902)
"The Tasks of the Revolution" (9 October 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/09.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1972, pp. 59 - 68. <br class="br">1910s
"Lenin's Hanging Order" (11 August 1918), an order for the execution of kulaks, as translated in The Unknown Lenin : From the Secret Archive (1996) by Richard Pipes, p. 50
Variant translation: Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers. … Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: "they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks".
As translated in Lenin : A Biography (2000) by Robert Service, p. 365.
1910s
Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 92–103.
Collected Works
The Three Sources and Three Constituent Parts of Marxism (March 1913)
1910s
Nikola" here is St. Nickolas' Day, as quoted in Autopsy for an Empire (1998) by Dmitri Volkogonov, p. 74.
Attributions
Collected Works, Vol. 18, pp. 163–169.
Collected Works
April Thesis (1917)
“Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class.”
Collected Works, Vol. 21, pp. 158–164.
Collected Works
Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Four, "The Export of Capital"