These studies, as later events were to prove, helped produce practical and concrete ways of making revolutions: [Lenin, says Nadezhda] not only read through, thoroughly studied, and thought over everything that Marx and Engels had written on revolution and insurrection. He also perused numerous works on the art of warfare, considering the technique and the organisation of the armed insurrection from all standpoints. He was occupied with this work much more than people realised, and his talk about “shock” groups during the civil war and “groups of five and ten” was not the chatter of a layman, but a well-thought-out proposition. Lenin labored day and night for seventeen years in perfecting his plans for the revolution. His opportunity was to come in November, 1917. In March, 1917, revolution erupted in Russia. The German army had defeated Russian troops. The Czar’s government was tottering, and a liberal regime, later headed by Alexander Kerensky, assumed control. The Czar was forced to abdicate. This was the signal for Russian revolutionaries of all types to return to Petrograd: Lenin from Switzerland, aided by the German High Command; Leon Trotsky, later to become a high official in the Bolshevik regime, from New York City; Stalin from Siberian exile. Lenin plotted against Kerensky, eagerly awaiting the moment he could overthrow the new government. He created dissension in the armed forces. He refused to cooperate with the government except on his own terms. All the time he was desperately building up and training his Bolshevik Party. Lenin had a “sixth sense” in diagnosing revolutionary situations. He knew when to act and when not. Like a crafty tiger, he was circling his prey. Lenin was the true leader of the Russian revolution. Stalin, fresh from Siberia, was relatively unknown, but he was learning the skills of deceit and murder that were soon to catapult him to power. In the fall of 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution. Lenin became the dictator of all Russia. Communism had made its first breach in the wall of capitalism. (The revolution occurred on October 25, 1917, according to the Eastern calendar then in use in Russia. Hence, the term “October Revolution.” Under the Western calendar, later adopted by the Soviets, the date is November 7, 1917.) The Bolsheviks immediately instituted a terroristic “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Marx had conceived the dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitory period for the establishment of a communist society. Lenin, however, dipped it in blood and gave it a prominence and ruthlessness that shocked the entire world. The secret police, then known as the Cheka, instituted a reign of terror; capital punishment was meted out widely. A search for enemies rocked the country. _Pravda_, the Party newspaper, urged drastic measures.