Review:
Booklist "Rappaport delivers a vital restoration of the real Lenin." Russian Life "The period of Lenin's life when he wandered Europe, impoverished and isolated, prior to the 1917 revolution is recounted in fascinating detail in this new book... This volume contributes immensely to our understanding of how Lenin forged his cadre, his leadership style and the worldview that all came to be so brutally reflected in the oppressive state he founded." Kirkus "Remini revisits the Compromise of 1850 as an important, cautionary tale for today.... [He] skillfully presents the debates by the Great Triumvirate - Clay, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster - and decides that Clay's compromise ultimately saved the Union by allowing the North ten years to prepare for war and to nourish the great leader it needed - Abraham Lincoln. A fresh look at the value of compromise in advancing the general interest." Seattle Times "[A]n excellent account of Lenin's formative years as a political exile from tsarist Russia that evokes the desperate scene of the European radical underground with nuance and in engaging detail.... Rappaport handles her subject with admirable objectivity, which makes the image of Lenin that emerges all the more damning." "Booklist" "Rappaport delivers a vital restoration of the real Lenin." "Russian Life" "The period of Lenin's life when he wandered Europe, impoverished and isolated, prior to the 1917 revolution is recounted in fascinating detail in this new book... This volume contributes immensely to our understanding of how Lenin forged his cadre, his leadership style and the worldview that all came to be so brutally reflected in the oppressive state he founded." "Kirkus" "Remini revisits the Compromise of 1850 as an important, cautionary tale for today.... [He] skillfully presents the debates by the Great Triumvirate - Clay, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster - and decides that Clay's compromise ultimately saved the Union by allowing the North ten years to prepare for war and to nourish the great leader it needed - Abraham Lincoln. A fresh look at the value of compromise in advancing the general interest." "Seattle Times" "[A]n excellent account of Lenin's formative years as a political exile from tsarist Russia that evokes the desperate scene of the European radical underground with nuance and in engaging detail.... Rappaport handles her subject with admirable objectivity, which makes the image of Lenin that emerges all the more damning." "Foreign Affairs" "Never before have [Lenin's] mind, habits, quirks, and passions been so well portrayed as in this book.... The events of these years have been recounted a thousand times, but Rappaport penetrates beyond them by trailing after Lenin, his utterly devoted wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and the sundry young Russian revolutionaries who collected about him in an endless succession of one-room furnitureless apartments, makeshift meeting places, and furtive printing centers." "Richmond Times-Dispatch" "Helen Rappaport, in Conspirator, vividly describes the years that Nikolai Lenin, one of the century's leading monsters, responsible for the reign of terror and the Gulag, spent in e
About the Author:
Helen Rappaport is a specialist in Russian history, as well as fluent in Russian. In 2002, she was Russian consultant to the National Theater's Tom Stoppard trilogy, The Coast of Utopia. She has translated all seven of Chekhov's plays and is most recently the author of The Last Days of the Romanovs. She lives in Oxford, England.
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