What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement started out as political pamphlet later turned into a book written by Vladimir Lenin (credited as N. Lenin) in 1901 and published in March 1902. He previewed the work in a May 1901 Iskra article, “Where to Begin”, which he called “a skeleton plan to be developed in greater detail in a pamphlet now in preparation for print”.[1][2] The title of What Is to Be Done? was taken from an 1863 novel of the same name by Russian revolutionary Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
The pamphlet’s central focus is the ideological formation of the proletariat.[3]: 30 Lenin argues that the working class will not become politically advanced simply by fighting economic battles against employers over wages, hours, and the like. To imbue the working class with Marxist principles, he recommends a cadre of dedicated revolutionaries form a vanguard political party that can teach Marxism to workers.