Reviews for Lenin

The average rating for Lenin based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-12-26 00:00:00 Tracey Hammill A valuable contribution to the study of the Russian revolution, for a number of reasons. It seeks not just to present Lenin's actions and theorizing in equal balance, but to spell out the interactions between them. While not shying away from depicting Lenin as the petty, mean-spirited polemicist and ruthless practitioner of terror that he certainly was, it does not read like yet another of the innumerable hatchet jobs on Russian revolutionaries. On the contrary, an attempt is made to understand his motives, in particular his murky relationship to his brother's death, and to place him in the context of his times. Most importantly, though, the book sets out to dismantle the idea of the Bolshevik party as having had a separate existence since 1902, a dogma that has obscured Lenin's long-lasting and ultimately futile struggle for unity under his leadership in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . Furthermore, it goes some way to dispel the notion that the Russian revolution was uniquely "self-conscious" and a streamlined application of Bolshevik theory in practice; instead, it seems most of Lenin's theoretical work up to that point proved quite irrelevant to the actual tasks of seizing and retaining power, and his improvisations and compromises in 1917 and beyond are thoroughly outlined. The concluding chapter, which acts both as a call for further research and a mini-bibliography of the twists and turns of the Lenin cult's formation, provides an excellent conclusion to a stimulating study.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-09 00:00:00 Daisuke Tsutsui Too many errors.