section_path: History/World War I and its aftermath (1914–1929)/Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution
section_name: Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution
paragraph_text: Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution
  
  The October Revolution of 1917, in which Bolshevik communists led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia, greatly influenced the development of fascism. Leon Trotsky would later formulate a theory of fascism based on a dialectical interpretation of events to analyze the manifestation of Italian fascism and the early emergence of Nazi Germany from 1930 to 1933. In 1917, Mussolini, as leader of the Fasces of Revolutionary Action, praised the October Revolution, but later he became unimpressed with Lenin, regarding him as merely a new version of Tsar Nicholas II. After World War I, fascists commonly campaigned on anti-Marxist agendas.
  
  Liberal opponents of both fascism and the Bolsheviks argue that there are various similarities between the two, including that they believed in the necessity of a vanguard leadership, showed contempt for bourgeois values, and had totalitarian ambitions. In practice, both have commonly emphasized revolutionary action, proletarian nation theories, one-party states, and party-armies; however, both draw clear distinctions from each other both in aims and tactics, with the Bolsheviks emphasizing the need for an organized participatory democracy (Soviet democracy) and an egalitarian, internationalist vision for society based on proletarian internationalism, while fascists emphasized hyper-nationalism and open hostility towards democracy, envisioning a hierarchical social structure as essential to their aims. With the antagonism between anti-interventionist Marxists and pro- interventionist fascists complete by the end of the war, the two sides became irreconcilable. The fascists presented themselves as anti-communists and as especially opposed to the Marxists. In 1919, Mussolini consolidated control over the fascist movement, known as Sansepolcrismo, with the founding of the Italian Fasces of Combat.