| Historians have typically treated Lenin as a power-hungry conspirator who duped Russian workers, and created a totalitarian one-party state. This analysis tends to ignore a crucial element of Lenin's political theory: his dialectical approach. Lenin saw political change, revolutionary or otherwise, as a fluid, fragmentary process characterized by change, motion, and conflict. This had a decisive effect on his political approach, and the way that he interpreted the nature of Russian society after the October revolution.;Lenin did not create socialism in Russia after October, 1917. He also did not himself believe that this is what he had done. Lenin believed that Russian society after October combined elements of feudalism, small-scale and large-scale capitalism, and socialism. Lenin adhered to the Marxist notion of a transition period between capitalism and socialism, and he applied this formula to Russia after October.;The major weakness of historical interpretations up to this point has been that the continuity in Lenin's perspective has been largely ignored. Lenin did not develop a pure model of socialism before October, only to betray it after. Because Russia was in a transition period between capitalism and socialism, he often combined capitalist and socialist methods. |
