Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? In Context: A Commentary and New Translation of What Is to Be Done? (Historical Materialism Book): 9 - Hardcover

Lih, Lars T

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004131205 ISBN 13: 9789004131200

Publisher: Brill, 2005

Synopsis

Lenin's What is to Be Done? (1902) has long been seen as the founding document of a 'party of a new type'. For some, it provided a model of 'vanguard party' that was the essence of Bolshevism, for others it manifested Lenin's élitist and manipulatory attitude towards the workers.
This substantial new commentary, based on contemporary Russian- and German-language sources, provides hitherto unavailable contextual information that undermines these views and shows how Lenin's argument rests squarely on an optimistic confidence in the workers' revolutionary inclinations and on his admiration of German Social Democracy in particular. Lenin's outlook cannot be understood, Lih claims here, outside the context of international Social Democracy, the disputes within Russian Social Democracy and the institutions of the revolutionary underground.
The new translation focuses attention on hard-to-translate key terms. This study raises new and unsettling questions about the legacy of Marx, Bolshevism as a historical force, and the course of Soviet history, but, most of all, it will revolutionise the conventional interpretations of Lenin.

About this title

About the Author

Lars T. Lih, Ph.D. (1984) Princeton, is the editor of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, the author of Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921, the chapter on ideology in the forthcoming The Cambridge History of Russia and numerous articles on the Bolsheviks.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brill
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004131205
• ISBN 13: 9789004131200
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 888