Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
The post-War edition of "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1920) identified the territorially punitive Russo–German Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) and the Allied–German Treaty of Versailles (1919) as proofs that empire and hegemony—not nationalism—were the economic motivations for the First World War. In the preface to the French and German editions of the essay, Lenin proposed that revolt against the capitalist global system would be effected with the "thousand million people" of the colonies and semi-colonies (the system's weak points), rather than with the urban workers of the industrialised societies of Western Europe. He proposed that revolution would extend to the advanced (industrial) capitalist countries from the underdeveloped countries, such as Tsarist Russia, where he and the Bolsheviks had successfully seized political command of the October Revolution of 1917. In political praxis, Lenin expected to realise the theory of "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" via the Third International (1919–1943), which he intellectually and politically dominated in the July and August conferences of 1920.