Abstract

The question of peaceful and nonpeaceful paths of the socialist revolution and the building of socialism is now the subject of the lively discussion in the international Communist and workers' movement. It is sometimes asserted that V. I. Lenin raised violence to an absolute, that he saw armed insurrection and civil war as virtually the only means of carrying out the socialist revolution. Inasmuch as under today's conditions, particularly in developed capitalist countries, seizure of power by the working class and toiling masses through armed insurrection is allegedly totally impossible, the conclusion is drawn that a number of basic propositions of Leninism are obsolete and that Leninism is a purely Russian phenomenon with no international significance. All such conclusions are nothing but a distortion of Leninism