The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the pivotal events in world history, and the Russian Bolshevik Party played a central role in that revolution. This book by British socialist Tony Cliff (1917-2000) traces the building of that party and, in particular, the work of its main architect, Lenin.

Tony Cliff was a lifelong organizer within the international socialist movement. His groundbreaking work established the unique interpretation of the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic, state-centered version of capitalism, rather than a workers' state. His many works include State Capitalism in Russia and the volume that follows-up from this book, All Power to the Soviets, about Lenin's political leadership from 1914 to 1917.

When Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik party led the first successful workers revolution in history, they were under no illusions that their work was finished with the overthrow of capitalism in Russia. As the fledgling workers' state was gripped by a civil war, the revolution's leaders remained steadfast in their commitment to spreading their successes across all of Europe. Tony Cliff (1917–2000) spent his life developing revolutionary Marxism against Stalinism. From his early days as a revolutionary in British-occupied Palestine to the high points of struggle in post-war Britain, Cliff worked to restore lost ideas and traditions and fan the flames of resistance.