The Concept of the State in the Works of V.I. Lenin

The article examines Lenin’s concept of the state based on the Marxist doctrine of the state, which he developed and supplemented, relying on the experience of Russian revolutions and the world’s first Soviet socialist state. The object of the study is Lenin’s fundamental work “The State and Revolution. The Marxist Doctrine of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution”, as well as many of his other works that touch upon the issue of the state. These primary sources were the base for analyses of Lenin’s views on the key concepts of the Marxist doctrine of the state such as the class nature of the state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, violent revolution, destruction of the bourgeois state machine, proletarian and bourgeois democracy, two phases of communist society, and the economic foundations of the withering away of the state. The methodology of the work is based on the principles of historicism, reliability, and consistency. A careful study and analysis of Leni’s works allowed us to conclude that some of his ideas on government and governance were relevant, as well as the need to rethink them in the context of a new historical stage in Russia’s development.