Written by a former Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University, 'Leninism' attempts a definitive and dispassionate study of Lenin's teachings and their influence in the formation of Soviet attitudes and policy. Leninism is presented as Marxism applied to Czarist Russia, and is compared with other schools. The broad outlines of Lenin's thought: his conception of the Party and the Revolution and his ideas on the state and society are the book's principal focus, from which Lenin emerges as as practical political theorist who was simultaneously an unprincipled political operator.