It was no surprise that Marxism appealed to much of the educated in Russia at the turn of the century. It promised an foreseeable progression into the modern world and offered an argument to prove it. Marxism gave some reason for the plight of the Russian worker as a necessary hardship toward the eventual realization of a workers' paradise. The idealized figure, the worker in whom the intelligentsia placed their hopes, carried a toughness and relentlessness that was necessary for the revolution. When the workers succeeded, it would once again allow the nostalgia for Russia's greatness to be reaffirmed, as the country would become a world leader. However, several aspects of the intelligentsia efforts were misleading. For one, they were uninterested in the rural life of the peasants, yet that was the group that they needed to convince. Further, the peasants were not interested in the ideas of the educated college students, who knew nothing of the hardships that they had endured. What right did these youngsters have to say that every generation before them was wrong? .
As the Bolsheviks continued, there seemed to be no one objecting to the fact that they were often not following Marxist principles. This was because realism had been adopted, as the idealist principles were not practical for several of Russia's problems. "As good Marxists, the Bolsheviks nationalized banking and credit very quickly after the October Revolution. But they did not immediately embark upon wholesale nationalization of industry: the first nationalization decrees concerned only individual large concerns like the Putilov Works that were already closely involved with the state through defense production and government contracts."" Lenin's opponents, the White Army, were also being dealt with in an attempt to neutralize their fight to retake the government. Realism called for, or at least in the eyes of the Bolsheviks, bloody fights to subdue the White Army, which often blanketed regions and developed into Civil War throughout Russia.