ABSTRACT
The leitmotiv running through the speeches and writings of Lenin in 1917 was the overshadowing importance of the political issue of the class which held the actual reins of power. The transfer of power to the Soviets, as organs which directly expressed the mood of those who toiled in town and village and which had been in large measure their own spontaneous creation, was required in order to prevent the March revolution from stopping half-way before the economic basis of the old nobility had been destroyed, as well as to lay the basis for an eventual transition from Capitalism to Socialism. Soviet policy reaffirmed what the Provisional Government had already inaugurated, in the shape of State monopoly of trading in grain, and did not introduce any new principle; although it strengthened this policy by nationalising all grain elevators and warehouses in February 1918.
