Lenin biography movie poster

In 1902, Lenin's political pamphlet , What Is To Be Done? The Burning Questions of Our Movement, was published. In it, he argued that because Russia's repressive autocracy outlawed political and labor organizing, a workers' party invited only police infiltration and arrest.

He reasoned instead that radicals should form a disciplined, professional vanguard to lead the masses when revolution became possible.

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This position split the party in 1903, when Lenin declared his followers "the majority," or Bolsheviks. Advocates for a workers' party along the lines of a European model became "the minority," or Mensheviks.

Using his keen pen against anyone of either faction who disagreed with him, Lenin remained in European exile almost continuously from 1900 to 1917, and in contrast to his comrades, who were harried by police and often exiled to Siberia, Lenin lived a conventional life outside Russia that starkly contrasted with his unbending political radicalism.