p The task of overthrowing the capitalist system by revolution and replacing it with the socialist system came to the fore when as a social and economic formation capitalism began to lose its progressive significance and became a hindrance to social advancement. However, it took decades of revolutionary struggle by the working people and dedicated creative labour by mankind’s finest minds before the historical need for socialism was clearly and scientifically substantiated and converted into the invincible theory of the socialist revolution. The foundation of this theory was laid by the great creators of scientific socialism—Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Vladimir Lenin brilliantly enlarged on this theory in the conditions of imperialism and evolved an integral teaching of the socialist revolution, of the struggle for socialism and of its triumph on a world-wide scale. Today, while rejecting the efforts of the opportunists to distort the actual trends of world development and conceal the revolutionary nature of our epoch, the world communist movement is creatively enriching Lenin’s concept. In their turn, the successes of the revolutionary movement, which are changing the face of the modern world, are introducing corrections into revolutionary theory and helping to perfect and develop it.

Thus, the evolution of the problems of the transition from capitalism to socialism has gone through several phases 10 inseparably linked with the elaboration and historical development of the entire theory, strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle.