Lenin: A New Biography - Hardcover

Volkogonov, Dmitri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0029334357 ISBN 13: 9780029334355

Publisher: Free Press, 1994

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Based on research among thousands of unpublished documents concealed in the Communist Party's archives until the fall of the regime. 'Lenin: Life and Legacy' is a crushing indictment of the regime's founder".
Sally Laird, ' Observer'

"Written with insight and authority...excellently translated by Harold Shukman".
Ian McIntyre, 'The Times'

In the first fully documented life of one of the greatest revolutionaries in history, Dmitri Volkogonov is free for the first time t access Lenin's life and legacy, unconstrained by the 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 finally crippled the final years of his life.

"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 an attempt of an honourable and honest representative of the Soviet military establishment to come to terms with the ideology, institutions and symbols which shaped the lifetime".
Dominic Lieven, 'The Spectator'

Synopsis:

Traces the life of the Soviet leader, uses the secret Soviet archives to reveal new information, and argues that Lenin set in motion many of the worst excesses of the state later expanded by Stalin.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0029334357
• ISBN 13: 9780029334355
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 604