Quotes from book
What Is to Be Done?

Name: What Is to Be Done?
Author: Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir LeninOriginal title Что дѣлать?, Наболѣвшіе вопросы нашего движенія (Russian, 1902)

What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement is a political pamphlet written by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in 1901 and published in 1902. Lenin said that the article represented "a skeleton plan to be developed in greater detail in a pamphlet now in preparation for print". Its title is inspired by the novel of the same name by the 19th century Russian revolutionary Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

“We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies and are under their almost constant fire. We have combined voluntarily, precisely for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not to retreat into the adjacent marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into a an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation.”

Vladimir Lenin book What Is to Be Done?

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter One, A. "What is 'Freedom of Criticism'?", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
Source: What Is to Be Done?

“One may become a demagogue out of sheer political innocence.”

Vladimir Lenin book What Is to Be Done?

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter Four