 Refused legal representation or bail, Lenin denied all charges against him but remained imprisoned for a year before sentencing. He spent this time theorising and writing, focusing on the revolutionary potential of the working-class; noting that the rise of industrial capitalism in Russia had led large numbers of peasants to move to the cities, where they formed a proletariat, from a Marxist perspective he argued that they would gain class consciousness and then violently overthrow Tsarism, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie to establish a proletariat state that would move toward socialism.
