Karl Marx could be considered the intellectual and philosophical leader of the Russian Revolution. Although he had died long before the revolution it was his ideas (along with Friedrich Engels) that sparked the political movements to overthrow the capitalist and autocratic government that was in place in 1917. His ideas on the evils of capitalism, the need to overthrow it in favor of socialism and the eventual conversion of socialism into communism led many to believe that the forms of government in place in many industrialized countries had to be replaced.
These Marxist thoughts led to the creation of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) whose members advocated the overthrow of capitalism in favor of socialism. One faction of this party was the Bolshevik Party led by Vladimir Lenin. When the first Russian Revolution occurred in February 1917, the Marxist RSDLP and other anti government parties, socialist and non-socialists) banded together to form the capitalist based Provisional Government. But by that time in Russia, the workers, soldiers and peasants were not content to remain under a capitalist system. Lenin used Marxist ideologies to convince the people that a Marxist system led by him and the Bolsheviks would be better than a capitalist system led by the ministers of the former government. Using Marxist propaganda, Lenin engineered the Bolshevik/Communist Revolution in October 1917.
