ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some of the major paradoxes that the unfolding of the October Revolution has unearthed for legal and political philosophy: the relation between revolution and civil war, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the place of law within the transitional period. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not only a conceptual innovation brought about by Lenin's reading of Marx and Engels but also a necessary consequence of a struggle waged under the historical conditions of the first total war. Some aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the relation entertained with law and violence open a series of inquiries about the limits of the modern political imaginary. The chapter provides information on the history of the Russian Revolution from the initial seizure of power through the years of the civil war to the dawn of the revolution from above.
