Lenin on the Train
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
One of The Economist's Best Books of the Year
A gripping, meticulously researched account of Lenin’s fateful 1917 rail journey from Zurich to Petrograd, where he ignited the Russian Revolution and forever changed the world
In April 1917, as the Russian Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication sent shockwaves across war-torn Europe, the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution Vladimir Lenin was far away, exiled in Zurich. When the news reached him, Lenin immediately resolved to return to Petrograd and lead the revolt. But to get there, he would have to cross Germany, which meant accepting help from the deadliest of Russia’s adversaries. Millions of Russians at home were suffering as a result of German aggression, and to accept German aid—or even safe passage—would be to betray his homeland. Germany, for its part, saw an opportunity to further destabilize Russia by allowing Lenin and his small group of revolutionaries to return.
Now, in Lenin on the Train, drawing on a dazzling array of sources and never-before-seen archival material, renowned historian Catherine Merridale provides a riveting, nuanced account of this enormously consequential journey—the train ride that changed the world—as well as the underground conspiracy and subterfuge that went into making it happen. Writing with the same insight and formidable intelligence that distinguished her earlier works, she brings to life a world of counter-espionage and intrigue, wartime desperation, illicit finance, and misguided utopianism.
When Lenin arrived in Petrograd’s now-famous Finland Station, he delivered an explosive address to the impassioned crowds. Simple and extreme, the text of this speech has been compared to such momentous documents as Constantine’s edict of Milan and Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses. It was the moment when the Russian revolution became Soviet, the genesis of a system of tyranny and faith that changed the course of Russia’s history forever and transformed the international political climate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British journalist Merridale (Red Fortress) recounts the background of what may have been the most consequential train ride in history, as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin) traveled in a sealed German car that slowly made its way from Switzerland to Petrograd's Finland Station in April 1917 and began fomenting what would become the Bolshevik Revolution later that year. Tracing the trip's progression and its immediate consequences, Merridale looks closely at German efforts to knock Russia out of WWI as well as Bolshevik agitation in Russia and Western Europe. She also mostly debunks the notion that Lenin received large amounts of gold from the Germans, showing that he accepted only modest German subsidies. Merridale examines the machinations of such lesser-known figures as Parvus (Alexander Helphand), Lenin's occasional ally and rival, and how Alexander Kerensky's provisional government sank itself by continuing to fight the Germans in WWI, which strengthened Lenin's hand in resolutely opposing the many Bolsheviks who favored forming a government with the more moderate, prowar Mensheviks. Unfortunately, Merridale's account of the immediate postrevolution period peters out in her discussion of Lenin's "death-cult," as embodied in the Moscow mausoleum that contained his embalmed corpse, and brief address of Stalin's crimes and their aftermath. Merridale's rushed and weak ending detracts from what is otherwise a colorful, suspenseful, and well-documented narrative.