Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 116

Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin sits in his Kremlin office, reading the Pravda (Truth) newspaper 16 October 1918 in Moscow, Russia.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Lenin’s Formula for
Agenda Setting
Col. William M. Darley, U.S. Army, Retired
We know that it is not at all necessary to have the sympathy
of a majority of the people in order to rule them. The right
organization can turn the trick.
—Roger Trinquier

S

oviet Union founder Vladimir Ilych Lenin used
three linked concepts to set a public-issues agenda
that facilitated his seizure and consolidation of

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political power in Russia circa 1917. Familiarity with
these tenets and their relationships is valuable to military strategic planners for two reasons. First, awareness
may give coherence of understanding with regard to a
specific methodology that has been used for more than a
century by many diverse insurgent and terrorist groups
as well as authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia,
North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela to seize political
power and then exercise sociopolitical control once in
November-December 2016  MILITARY REVIEW