ABSTRACT
According to Soviet theoreticians, the fundamentals of Soviet military thought are found in Lenin's writings. Major Soviet publications on military affairs, from the textbook Beginning Military Training to Admiral Gorshkov's The Sea Power of the State, are sprinkled with quotations from Lenin. This guarantees the reliability and ideological trustworthiness of the work. Among the most frequently quoted of Lenin's works is "War and Revolution," first given as a lecture in May 1917. In this article Lenin established a basic Soviet Party military concept that remains unchanged to this day: The class struggle is the underlying cause of war. When a worldwide socialist society is achieved, the very possibility of war will be eliminated. War cannot be understood, according to Lenin, without first understanding its class nature. Quoting Clausewitz's dictum that "war is a continuation of policy by other means," Lenin went on to assert that wars are inseparable from the political system that engendered them.
