If we were going to follow Lenin's lead in starting a revolution, what would that mean?  Let's go through it, step by step:

Step 1: Be born the son of a minor aristocrat in a semi-industrialized, yet imperialist and profoundly repressive society with a large yet deeply divided portion of the populace already dedicated to the violent overthrow of the government.

Step 2: Wait for a world war.

Step 3: When violent overthrow of the government comes (emerging out of anti-war protests), don't have anything to do with it.  Don't even be in the country, or aware of what's happening, but by total coincidence, just happen to be the family friend of the person who comes to be in charge of the new government.

Step 4: From the center of imperialism, and later from a neutral country, write abstract theory that almost no one reads, in which you advocate for allowing enemy countries to defeat your country in war.  No one reads this, that is, except for the secret police of the imperialist powers, who decide that you could be quite useful to them.

Step 5: Make a deal with a western imperialist power, that they will support you and install you back in your home country. 

Step 6: As you travel back to your home country, write theory that promises to replace the authoritarian state with a "semi-state," proclaiming "all power to the workers' councils".  Once you arrive, give speeches promising to end the war, hold democratic elections and abolish the death penalty.  Gain a small group of followers.

Step 7: When your family friend, the leader, allows soldiers to participate in decision-making in the army, have your followers encourage soldiers to, in effect, totally collapse the war effort, even as the western enemy army is pouring over your borders en masse. 

Step 7: When members of the officer class foment a potential military coup against your family friend, and he arms your supporters to defend him against this military coup, betray him and use the arms to take over the state house.

Step 8: Hold an election. Lose the election. Allow the new parliament to meet for one day, then send soldiers in to shut it down by force.

Step 9: Make a peace treaty with the western imperialist power that is invading your country, conceding a huge portion of your country's land, including 54% of the industrial land and 89% of your coalfields.  In essence, surrender to western imperialist aggression.  Sell out your country to western imperialism.

Step 10: When a member of the political party that won the democratic election (the Socialist Revolutionaries), enraged that you have surrendered to the imperialists, attempts to assassinate you, bring back capital punishment and start executing members of her party. 

Step 11: Expand this into a period of terror, mass executions, and general repression (the "Red terror").  Rather than worker control of the means of production, declare an "army of labor" with yourself as its commander, naturally.

Step 12: Fight a protracted civil war against your own people.

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