Leninism is the body of political theory, developed by and named after the Russian revolutionary and later Soviet premier
Vladimir Lenin, for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary
vanguard party and the achievement of a
dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of
socialism. Leninism comprises socialist political and economic theories, developed from
Marxism, as well as Lenin’s interpretations of Marxist theory for practical application to the socio-political conditions of the agrarian early-twentieth-century
Russian Empire. In February 1917, for five years, Leninism was the Russian application of Marxist economics and political philosophy, effected and realised by the
Bolsheviks, the vanguard party who led the fight for the political independence of the
working class.