roletariat, but from the bourgeoisie and be composed of mainly middle class intellectuals. (Strangely enough he seemed to fit this criteria quite snuggly!) This party, he postulated, would have to be a small, closely knit, highly centralized, highly disciplined, conspiratorial and quasi-military organization of professional revolutionaries. It would have to be a fighting organization composed of men totally dedicated to the destruction of the old and the establishment of a new social order . Lenin said, “Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will turn Russia upside down!” Also amongst the core principles of Lenin’s vanguard party would be the use of violence as an instrument of policy. Lenin stipulated the need for smashing and destroying the bourgeois state and was not shy in saying in reference to class enemies (a term applied to priests, Imperial Army officers, large and small businessmen, landowners and anyone else who opposed his brand of socialism), that “one has to beat their heads in without mercy.” In this respect especially, as will be shown, Stalin was to be in complete concordance with Lenin. The aspect of Lenin’s ideology, from which Stalin was to later most significantly differ and diverge from, was that regarding international socialist revolution. In 1915 Lenin published two pamphlets, “The Collapse of the Second International” and “Socialism and War”. These were followed in1916 by his second major ideological work – “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”. The main thrust of these works was that, as exemplified by the war, capitalism was in crisis and that now more than ever there was a need for revolution not just in Russia, but across all of Europe. Lenin wrote, “ To the question, ‘What would the party of the proletariat do if the revolution placed it in power in the present war?’ we answer: ‘...
