Lenin wrote the text that became the April Theses while he
was in exile in Switzerland; they were published when he returned to Russia in April,
1917. In February of that year, Tsar Nicholas II had been deposed and a provisional
government had been established. Lenin returned to Russia as quickly as possible after
the ouster of the Tsar; his April Theses were his statements of conflict with the
provisional government and his proposals for a new governing order in
Russia.
The Theses
proposed:
-that the provisional government was a puppet of
the bourgeois upper class and needed to be overthrown
-that
the ultimate governmental model needed in Russia was "a republic of Soviets of Workers',
Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to
bottom."
-that all privately-owned farmland (the vast
estates of the bourgeois) needed to be nationalized, followed by the establishment of
large communal farms governed by the peasant farmers who worked
them
-that the proper name for the new political party
being formed by the Bolsheviks should be the Communist Party in recognition of the
communist philosophy and organization being advocated
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