|
Lenin: A New Biography | 
 enlarge | Author: Dmitri Volkogonov
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $69.00
Buy Used: $8.95
You Save: $60.05 (87%)
New (22) Used (45) Collectible (2) from $8.95
Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 415172
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 529
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.7
ISBN: 0029334357
Dewey Decimal Number: 947.0841092
EAN: 9780029334355
ASIN: 0029334357
Publication Date: October 12, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Legendary independent bookstore online since 1994. Reliable customer service and no-hassle return policy.
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The special assistant to Boris Yeltsin radically alters the traditional image of Lenin with a biography based on secret Soviet archives, revealing the Founding Father as a cruel, totalitarian leader who was responsible for the worst excesses of the Soviet state.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Further Insight On A Major Historical Figure June 29, 2007
Lenin, no matter what is thought of his philosophy, is one of the major figures of 20th century history. The author of this book had access to newly released documents (at the time, ca. 1994) from the archives of the USSR, and has used them in a telling biography of the man.
Some have called the author less than objective, and that probably is true. The times in which the book was written need to be taken into account. But if the author was less than objective, this book still reveals much about Lenin and the inner workings of the regime he helped create.
Lenin had but one thing that he used as a criterion for deciding what must be done: Does it help the revolution? That he was capable of ordering the execution of 'undesirables', letting people starve, all because he thought it was good for the revolution tells the truth about the man. He was ruthless, he was cruel, and evidently had no problem with his conscience over anything he ordered done.
What I got from this book is that Lenin was the architect for what came after him. Stalin took full advantage of this, and evolved the brutality to new heights. But Lenin was the beginning. Stalin was but the continuation.
A book that does get bogged down at times in detail, and has to be 'waded' through. Hence only 4 stars. But there is plenty to read and learn, and the 'wade' was worth it. Despite that caveat, still recommended.
 AN EX-STALINIST'S REVISION OF LENIN April 4, 2007
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
In my political life I have read numerous biographies, sketches and essays on the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, none of them recently. Thus, in looking for a new book on Lenin's life I was searching for one that would reflect the latest information from the various archives opened up by the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92. With that in mind I happened upon this biography by a Soviet historian who had intimate access to and control over the Soviet archives. However, even with that imprimatur this hostile biography could easily have been written in 1955 by any number of former communist turned anti-communist Western writers during the heart of the Cold War under the influence of the `god that failed' theory of anti-communism. So much for the virtue of access to the new files! Moreover, after reading the biography I found that it told more about the author than the subject. He was a good Khrushchevite when Khrushchev was in power. He was a good Brezhnevite when Brezhnev was in power. He was a good Gorbachevite when Gorbachev was in power. Finally, after the demise of the Soviet Union and the capitalist counter-revolution under Yeltsin he was a good Yeltsinite. No one can deny that the author knew how to trim his sails to determine which way the political winds blew. Whether such a checkered personal biography permits him then to write a critique of a revolutionary leader, any revolutionary leader, apparently without the least embarrassment is another question. Well, such is the literary life.
And so what is the latest in Soviet historiography on Lenin? The author retails every `horror' story about Lenin that has been sifted through the anti-communist milieu since Lenin first came on the political scene at the turn of the 20th century Russia. Of course, the author starts with the Bolshevik-Menshevik split in 1903- that is the `original sin' for all anti-Leninists who claim to stand in any tendency of the international social democratic tradition. He then goes through the litany of later sins; the anti-nationalist, anti-war Bolshevik propaganda of the First World War; the hoary tales of `German' gold to the Bolsheviks in the wake of the February Revolution in Russia; the `sealed train' through Germany bringing Lenin and other Social Democrats back to Russia; the defeatism toward the Provisional Government; the Bolshevik `coup' in October; the outrage to the author's nationalist sentiments of the Brest Litovsk Treaty with Germany; and, the horrors of the Civil War, lightly passing over the White internal and foreign counterrevolutionary actions and placing the onus on the Bolsheviks. And much more in that same vane.
The real point of the documentation presented throughout the book, however, is to buttress the author's central argument that bad old Stalinism was not some sort of distortion of Bolshevism and Leninist thought but the true and natural heir of Leninism. Others have argued that position far more persuasively with far less access to the archives. The fact of the matter, at least based on this exposition, is that the archives provide little new hard material about Lenin and the early Bolshevik regime that has not already been in circulation for a long time. Take one example, the `relationship' between the Bolsheviks and the German military High Command during World War I that has been speculated on in reams of material. He sets up his argument for such an alliance using the time worn innuendoes of secret meetings, use of intermediaries, etc. However, if an author is using this argument in the post-Soviet period then one would expect some new information that definitely links Lenin to German `gold' or let it rest. Where is the smoking gun? As there is nothing new the author lets us off with some dubious circumstantial evidence and lots and lots of conjecture. It goes on and on like that throughout most of the book. The author has personal axes to grind here and the archives only marginally help him in his critique.
Finally, what of the counterfactual argument that every historian makes to argue that an alternative situation to the one that occurred was possible? Here the author argues that in 1917 some form of Menshevik/Social Revolutionary government or a more stable Kerensky government i.e. bourgeois governments could have brought Russia out of its impasse and into the Western democratic parliamentary tradition. He even has a kind word for the Czar in retrospect, at least as a battering ram against the Bolsheviks. This hardened Stalinist who has since found `religion' attempts to argue a very, very improbable position. Kerensky was the best, and I do mean best, those forces had at their command. And he was by all accounts (except his own) a lightweight. No more need be said.
Well, we do not always get the revolutions in the pristine condition we would like and this is not the place to argue extensively about the author's politics but both by their actions and by the crush of events the possibility of some kind of bourgeois democracy in 1917 Russia was the least likely possibility. In short, like in other such revolutionary periods, it was the Bolsheviks or the counterrevolutionary Whites. And one had to act accordingly.
 Not a biography March 7, 2007
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
I'm sorry, but there's no reason to give this a good review. First of all, the book is extremely slanted. In the beginning it's not so bad, but the author's country, Russia, is just coming out of Communism, and apparently he really hated that economic system. This guy was hell-bent on proving Lenin, as well as Communism, to be two great evils. Time and again he talked about Lenin's poor ability as a statesman, his bad decisions, his use of terror and his close-mindedness, among other things. For a chapter this author even goes into Stalin, when this book isn't even supposed to be about him! And then sometimes it goes into the last couple of decades of the Soviet country, talking about how some of the leaders were still applying Leninist and Stalinist use of terror and censorship! None of this has anything to do with Lenin's life, and it's simply used to show how bad Communism was. Apparently they spent so much time brainwashing their people that the only way for one person to convince himself Soviet Communism was wrong was to write a book disproving it. The first 100 pages or so are good and actually deal with Lenin, and are interesting, but as a biography... this is an EXTREME let down. It is NOT a biography. This is a history of Lenin, his friends, and Soviet Russia. It is like a book about Lenin and everything related to him. It could be retitled "The Leninist peroid in early Russia and it's effects on the country later on" and be more accurate. This book was not written by an experienced author, but probably published solely for the reason that this author had access to the secret soviet archives. Do not by this book -- find another biography.
Subject Without Objectivity December 23, 2005
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
There is no doubt that Lenin achieved a level of recognition that will continue for as long as humans maintain a sentient capacity. The fact remains, however, that he gained this recognition largely through his association with others. Dmitri Volkogonov's biography does not acknowledge this aspect and is therefore singularly shallow. In fact, those central to Lenin's rise are not even mentioned.
Truman Capote brilliantly encapsulated this problem in his 1994 New York Times review: 'Volkogonov's biography of this unique figure is flawed not by its inclusions but by its myopic exclusions. It is impossible to present a balanced account of Lenin without reference to the other three Beatles.'
Blind spot of the west November 22, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
For some reason westerners continue to have something of a blind spot for V.I. Lenin. The conception that Stalin perverted Lenin's idealist vision, that Lenin's communism might have been a more viable utopian ideal had he survived, remains strong. This is one of several books that should help to shatter that illusion once and for all as it comprehensively documents the extent to which Stalinism was firmly rooted in Lenin's murderous totalitarian revolution.
Volkogonov's book is far from perfect in this English translation. The opening chapters are somewhat non-linear and unfocused (it only really picks up once it starts discussing Germany's role in Lenin's return to Russia in 1917, about a third of the way in), for all his supposed access to secret archive documentation the author is occasionally prone to speculation (though he usually admits as much, for example in discussing Lenin and Sverdlov's roles in the murder of the Tsar's family), and the English translator freely admits that he's cut out large sections of deeply Russian philosophical discussions.
But for all that, the book remains a powerful testament to Lenin's flaws. Few details in the book were that new to me. I knew the Germans had helped the Bolsheviks for their own ends in 1917; I knew about Lenin's almost mindless obsession with violence as the sole true path to revolution; I knew about Lenin's cynical willingness to discard almost any principles in the pursuit of power for the Bolsheviks. But seeing all of this documented - and far more of it is documented than some reviewers are suggesting - by the Bolsheviks' own hands makes it all the more powerful.
Nor do I think that the book is that biased. Certainly Lenin still comes off better than Stalin; Lenin doesn't so much come across as personally evil as he does blindly obsessed with the idea that his great misguided experiment justified the implementation of any means, however cruel, deadly or violent. But unlike Stalin, he wasn't interested in personal power for its own sake or personal self-aggrandisement. It's a small distinction, but an important one - though I would argue that a genuine belief in your visionary ideal makes it no more forgiveable when that ideal requires killing millions.
This isn't a book that's going to appeal to all tastes; some will find the first third (which, as others have noted, isn't really a traditional Western biography) hard going, and it probably isn't the only biography of Lenin that those interested in the subject should read. But readers who stick with it will nonetheless be richly rewarded.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
