Abstract: Arguably the most consequential work of any of the four Russian Social Democratic Labor Party Duma fractions came with the onset of the First World War. The antiwar actions of the five Bolshevik deputies in the Fourth Duma were for Lenin a model for what he would begin to call communist parliamentary work. But after they were arrested and exiled to Siberia, that work ceased to occupy his attention to the degree it once had. The reason is that with the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty in February 1917, Lenin would have to spend much of his time before and after the October Revolution defending soviet governance, for him a superior form of representative democracy. By no means did this signify a change of heart about the parliamentary arena. To the contrary, he maintained to the end that in the absence of soviets communists should make use of parliaments but based on the lessons drawn and codified by the new Communist or Third International. Subsequent history revealed, however, that only a few who claimed to do politics in his name were faithful to the legacy he bequeathed.KeywordsCentral CommitteeRepresentative DemocracySocialist RevolutionOctober RevolutionRussian RevolutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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