<P> In February 1917, revolution exploded in Russia . Workers, soldiers and peasants established soviets (councils), the monarchy fell and a provisional government convoked pending the election of a constituent assembly . In April of that year, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik faction of socialists in Russia and known for his profound and controversial expansions of Marxism, was allowed to cross Germany to return to his country from exile in Switzerland . </P> <P> Lenin had published essays on his analysis of imperialism, the monopoly and globalisation phase of capitalism as predicted by Marx, as well as analyses on the social conditions of his contemporary time . He observed that as capitalism had further developed in Europe and America, the workers remained unable to gain class consciousness so long as they were too busy working and concerning with how to make ends meet . He therefore proposed that the social revolution would require the leadership of a vanguard party of class - conscious revolutionaries from the educated and politically active part of the population . </P> <P> Upon arriving in Petrograd, Lenin declared that the revolution in Russia was not over, but had only begun and that the next step was for the workers' soviets to take full state authority . He issued a thesis outlining the Bolshevik's party programme, including rejection of any legitimacy in the provisional government and advocacy for state power to be given to the peasant and working class through the soviets . The Bolsheviks became the most influential force in the soviets and on 7 November the capitol of the provisional government was stormed by Bolshevik Red Guards in what afterwards known as the "Great October Socialist Revolution". The rule of the provisional government was ended and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic--the world's first constitutionally socialist state--was established . On 25 January 1918 at the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin declared "Long live the world socialist revolution!" and proposed an immediate armistice on all fronts and transferred the land of the landed proprietors, the crown and the monasteries to the peasant committees without compensation . </P> <P> The day after assuming executive power on 25 January, Lenin wrote Draft Regulations on Workers' Control, which granted workers control of businesses with more than five workers and office employees and access to all books, documents and stocks and whose decisions were to be "binding upon the owners of the enterprises". Governing through the elected soviets and in alliance with the peasant - based Left Socialist - Revolutionaries, the Bolshevik government began nationalising banks and industry; and disavowed the national debts of the deposed Romanov royal régime . It sued for peace, withdrawing from World War I and convoked a Constituent Assembly in which the peasant Socialist - Revolutionary Party (SR) won a majority . </P>

Believed that workers should own and control the means of production