What philosophy did Vladmir Lenin embrace during the Russian Revolution?

Question

and why did he believe russian peasants would join his "revolution"?

Answer 1

He embraced communism. Communism believes that workers should be the ruling ones and not the rich classes, so that in a later stage there would be no classes at all.Just people working for people.

Answer 2

There's a great book about life in Russia after the Revolution which offers a lot of insight into the Russian people's way of thinking.  By the way, the book is also greatly entertaining and has just become available in English.  It's called, Jack Vosmerkin - the American, and you can take a look for free here (one interesting thing about the book is that a young Russian spends several years in America and then goes back after the Revolution, combining his knowledge of both cultures throughout):

http://www.geocities.com/maxmakc



http://www.geocities.com/maxmakc/free_sa...

Answer 3

Lenin did not so much embrace Marxism (a form of Communism) as modify it to fit the Russian actualité.  

Marxism, and Leninism do not focus on the peasantry, it is a philosophy about the working, urban classes (Maoism and Castro-ism are peasant based variants of Marxism).

But he believed that ordinary Russians would join the Revolution because it was just, right and - to him and the Bolsheviks inevitable that they would prevail.

The Duma - to answer your other question was the legislative assembly granted under Nicholas II after the 1905 revolution - it was largely impotent, but was important as an introduction to democratic politics for Russia (it is also the name of the current Russian parliament).