As the Russian Revolution grew in 1917, so did a new political force known as communism. When the Tsarist autocracy was overthrown, a new government was now needed to rule Russia. After the abdication of the Russian throne and a civil war between the Bolsheviks (Red Army) and the Russian Republic (White Army), the Bolsheviks emerged victorious and established themselves as the ruling party in Russia. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin preached Karl Marx's famous pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, because he believed that communism was the ideal political system for Russia. Despite his beliefs in Marxism, Lenin felt that it had its limits; therefore he applied Marxism to the extent he considered necessary to establish communism in Russia. News of the Russian Revolution first reached Lenin by word of mouth while he was in exile in Switzerland. After learning about the February Revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, Lenin made it his mission to return to Russia and become part of the Revolution. While on a train en route to Russia, Lenin wrote what came to be known as his April Theses: his program for the Bolshevik Party. He believed that the February Revolution was only an initial stage of the revolution and that now the proletarians must organize in order to eliminate the bourgeoisie and ultimately place the proletarians in power. Organizing the proletarians would create a revolutionary vanguard party that would govern as a proletarian dictatorship. In Marxist terms, a socialist dictatorship would allow the proletariat to have political control. Marx states in his Manifesto that if proletarians were organized into a political party, they would become a powerful political force: "The organization... middle of paper... because he felt they had only one of two choices: ideology bourgeois or socialist. Taking part in a socialist revolution would be the only reasonable option for the proletarians, because they have stuck their necks out because of the hard work they have done for the bourgeoisie. Both Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin were revolutionaries with their radical views on government and society. Marx intended to apply his work to Western European societies, without hoping that Russian revolutionaries would use his teachings as a blueprint for their own bourgeois overthrow. The extent of Lenin's use of Marxism was limited because Lenin adapted Marx's theories to the Russian proletarians from whom he would rally support. By adding the dimension of Leninism to Marxism, Lenin lit the spark that would lead Imperial Russia to become the Soviet Union..