Lenin
A biography (Text Only)
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
‘Based on research among thousands of unpublished documents concealed in the Communist Party archives until the fall of the regime, Lenin: Life and Legacy is a crushing indictment of the regime’s founder…’
Sally Laird, Observer
In the first fully documented life of one of the greatest revolutionaries in history, Dmitri Volkogonov is free for the first time to assess Lenin’s life and legacy, unconstrained by demands of political orthodoxy. In addition to showing conclusively that the violence and coercion that characterised the Soviet system derived entirely from Lenin, the author also describes in detail the personal life of Lenin: his family antecedents, his private finances, the early funding of the Bolshevik Party, his relationship with his mistress Inessa Armand, and the debilitating illness that crippled the final months of his life
Reviews
‘Written with insight and authority… excellently translated by Harold Shukman’
Ian McIntyre, The Times
‘Volkogonov has done a remarkable job of researching into the newly available archives and reducing them to this manageable size. Harold Shukman has done an equally valuable job of editing and translating. Between them they have “demolished the icon”.’
David Floyd, Daily Telegraph
‘Serious and impressive… Volkogonov’s biography is all the more moving in being hte attempt of an honourable and honest representative of the Soviet military establishment to come to terms with the ideology, institutions and symbols which shaped his lifetime.’
Dominic Lieven, Spectator
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a notably revelatory biography, Volkogonov presents the most compelling evidence to date that Lenin, not Stalin, was the true father of Soviet totalitarianism. The author draws heavily on newly declassified KGB archives that he oversees as special assistant to President Boris Yeltsin. Quoting extensively from Lenin's once top-secret communications, Volkogonov shows that Lenin personally created a system of terror that laid the foundations for Stalin's dictatorship. We see how Lenin created the omnipotent Cheka, or political police, and immersed himself in its daily activities; launched an onslaught against religious institutions; initiated systematic extermination of the land-owning peasantry, or kulaks; and ordered the murder of Nicholas II and his family, then commended the executioners. Historian and former Soviet General Volkogonov (Stalin) provides new details on Germany's covert financing of the Bolshevik Party and, on a more personal note, of Lenin's 10-year affair with Inessa Armand, a relationship his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, tolerated. Volkogonov's narrative is indispensable for understanding the Bolshevik coup, their crushing of the democratic opposition and the tragic aftermath. Photos not seen by PW.
