The Vision, 1890–1917

Lenin has often been seen as a revolutionary first and a Marxist second. In the strictly chronological sense, this is undeniable. Lenin’s rebellion came before his Marxism, and was almost certainly begun by his brother’s execution. His first guru in the field of revolution was not Marx but the writer his brother had admired most, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, whose belief in a distinctive Russian path to socialism had gone together with fierce hostility towards the liberal-capitalist civilization of the west; and not until the early 1890s did he go over — become converted, one might say — to Marxism.