After Lenin returned to revolutionary Petrograd in April 1917, events themselves quickly took several decisive turns. By the end of the month, Alexander Kerensky, the only workers’ representative in the bourgeois Provisional Government, was reporting to the Soviet Executive Committee that the government had effectively ceased to function amid ongoing economic crisis and Soviets around the country were taking matters into their own hands.

I have been asked by my Swedish comrades to write a brief preface to Lenin’s State and Revolution – a task which I readily agreed to, given the enormous importance of this work for the worldwide struggle for socialism. Strangely enough, the question of the state, despite its colossal significance, is something that does not normally occupy the attention of even the most advanced workers.