General histories give little credence to the utopian side of Lenin's revolutionary thought, especially in relation to his only formal utopian work, State and Revolution. Standard interpretations pass off that work as an "intellectual deviation” resulting from Lenin's "revolutionary fever” of 1917, while offering What Is To Be Done? as the statement of orthodox Leninism.

Lenin's utopianism was not, in fact, a temporary aberration but a very real part of his intellectual outlook which had its origins in the simplistic atmosphere of the Ulyanov household. The harsh, uncompromising attitudes expressed in What Is To Be Done? were developed during his brother's trial and execution and during his own arrest and exile.

Lenin was attracted to Chernyshevsky and Marx because both expressed his own two-pronged outlook: utopian goals and pragmatic methods. This outlook is revealed in his two best known works What Is To Be Done and State Revolution.

The actual role of Lenin's 1917 "revolutionary fever" was not to motivate the writing of State and Revolution but to prompt him to attempt a socialist revolution. It was his ingrained utopianism that caused him to interpret the events of 1917 as a mandate for the ideals expressed in State and Revolution. That utopianism was always a part of Lenin's intellectual outlook, but it was only in 1917 that he found the confidence to give it priority over “pragmatic methods."