Preface Note on Transliteration and Calendars List of Illustrations Glossary of Names of Lenin and his Family Maps Introduction Part One: The Rebel Emerges 1. The Ulyanovs and the Blanks 2. Childhood in Simbirsk 1870-1885 3. Deaths in the Family 1886-1887 4. The Ploughing of the Mind 1887-1888 5. Paths to Revolution 1889-1893 6. St Petersburg 1893-1895 7. To Siberian Italy 1895-1900 Part Two: Lenin and the Party 8. An Organization of Revolutionaries 1900-1902 9. 'Holy Fire' 1902-1904 10. Russia from Far and Near 1905-1907 11. The Second Emigration 1908-1911 12. Almost Russia! 1912-1914 13. Fighting for Defeat 1914-1915 14. Lasting Out 1915-1916 Part Three: Seizing Power 15. Another Country February to April 1917 16. The Russian Cockpit May to July 1917 17. Power for the Taking July to October 1917 18. The October Revolution October to December 1917 19. Dictatorship Under Siege Winter 1917-1918 20. Brest-Litovsk January to May 1918 21. At Gunpoint May to August 1918 Part Four: Defense of the Revolution 22. War Leader 1918-1919 23. Expanding the Revolution April 1919 to April 1920 24. Defeat in the West 1920 25. The New Economic Policy January to June 1921 26. A Question of Survival July 1921 to July 1922 27. Disputing to the Last September to December 1922 28. Death in the Big House 1923-1924 Lenin: The Afterlife Notes Select Bibliography Index
Service knows as much about Lenin's life as anybody around. What he has done is to write a more personal biography of Lenin than has ever been written before. A great deal of new material has come out since 1991 or even a bit earlier, especially on Lenin's personal life--on his health, physical and psychic. The book enriches Lenin's life with detail and should be made widely available. -- Abbott Gleason, author of Totalitarianism There is nothing approaching Service's book in Russian. In English, no one has examined Lenin's career as microscopically as Service or attempted to bring the man and his works into a single and, at the same time, comprehensive focus. Service makes quite clear the inordinate costs of Lenin's revolutionary activity for Russia and the world. But he conveys this assessment by scrupulous reconstruction of his subject's career and careful criticism of existing interpretations. This is the ablest, the most accurate, and the most up-to-date treatment of the subject that we have, or will have for a very long time. -- Martin Malia, author of Russia Under Western Eyes
Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and Emeritus Professor of Russian History at the University of Oxford.
The best place to begin assessing Boshevism’s founder is the work
of the British historian Robert Service. The present volume, Lenin:
A Biography, is the fourth the author has devoted to his lifelong
subject, its three predecessors, published between 1985 and 1995,
being a meticulous chronicle of Lenin’s political life. Yet the
past decade has produced sufficient archival material to make
possible a biography of Lenin the man, and this is the new volume’s
task. It may also serve as a summary of the preceding trilogy, to
which readers can refer back for fuller details at any point… Even
in Russia, historians prefer Service’s nuanced and judicious
account to the more sensational work of the late Dmitri Volkogonov,
as well as to the standard Western treatments. Indeed, Service is
consciously writing against the predominant Lenin canon in both
East and West… [He] seeks to reconstruct Lenin’s motives
historically, decision by decision, as the settings of his action
changed. Moreover, his analysis has been refined by the
vicissitudes of time.
*New York Review of Books*
The wonder of this particular account is that Service succeeds in
explaining how Lenin came to [his] determined confidence and the
complex and ultimately tragic circumstances that led to the triumph
of his ambitions… The most significant contribution of this book is
the wealth of personal information that makes Lenin a far more
accessible, if not appealing, individual… Such details make Lenin
all the more human and so all the more vivid and frightening…
Service never allows his narrative to slip into sentimentality or
forgets whom he is dealing with.
*Wall Street Journal*
With the help of previously unpublished documents recently released
from central party archives, [Service] has managed to skillfully
depict the surreal life of an obsessive, brilliant and stubborn
individual who usually found himself the champion of the minority
opinion within a minority of just a small number of
revolutionaries—who, for most of their lives, did not have a
revolution in sight.
*The Guardian*
Lenin was the one essential personality of the communist movement
that shook the world for most of the twentieth century. In this
marvelous synthesis of previously known history and information
newly available since the dissolution of the Soviet Union that
Lenin founded, Robert Service lays out how that came to be… Service
is able to humanize Lenin without suggesting that in that humanity
lies any explanation of or excuse for the excesses of the
revolution he led.
*Boston Globe*
In this thorough biography, Robert Service uses the abundant new
archival evidence to describe Lenin’s personal idiosyncracies, and
also to underline, once again, his many ideological contradictions…
Service then goes on to show how Lenin betrayed, in practice,
virtually all of his paper principles, which had themselves changed
several times in any case: far from creating a state in which
ordinary workers took decisions about the running of society, Lenin
created a totalitarian dictatorship.
*Herald on Sunday*
In his massive, all-encompassing biography, British historian
Robert Service does not lose track of his subject’s stature…but
what interests Service more is the person as opposed to the
persona… The reader is left with a personality rooted in paradox: a
coldly calculating individual capable of deep emotion; a man who
possessed little empathy yet became outraged by the slightest
injustice… This lucidly written, sharply observed biography will no
doubt come to be regarded as a definitive portrait of Lenin for
some time.
*Houston Chronicle*
A comprehensive and intimate biography of the Russian
revolutionary.
*Washington Post*
In Lenin: A Biography, Robert Service argues that Lenin’s
importance evolved from three major achievements: He led the
October Revolution, he founded the Soviet Union, and he laid out
the rudiments of Marxism-Leninism… This is a fascinating and
engaging book, not the least because it is the first comprehensive
Lenin biography to appear since crucial Soviet archives have been
opened.
*Washington Times*
Throughout this massive and exhaustive biography of Lenin, British
historian Robert Service does not lose sight of his subject’s
stature as the father of the twentieth century’s feast of horrors.
What interests Service more, however, is an exploration of the
person behind the political persona… Service has diligently
incorporated his archival findings into this work, which has
enabled him to take issue with the many biographies that tend to
portray Lenin as either a sociopath or savior… This lucidly
written, insightful biography will no doubt come to be regarded as
a definitive interpretation of Lenin.
*Central Europe Review*
The demise of the country and the ideology its elite professed (at
least externally) to the very end requires a new evaluation of the
founder of the Soviet state. The opening of the Russian archives
provided an additional incentive for such work. In a new biography,
Robert Service…provides fresh material as well as an original
vision of Lenin. Readers will enjoy his information and
observations, even if they do not share his views… Readers will
find a lot of details about Lenin’s Jewish ancestral links, his
supportive family, his love affairs, and the last hours of his
life. At the same time, Service presents him as a calculating yet
compulsive politician obsessed to the point of mania with his
vision of history and the future… One should read Service’s
excellent book not so much to ponder the problems of the past but
of the present and future.
*World and I*
[A] significant addition… Without doubt, Service’s life-of should
answer all curiosities about Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin)—about his
personality, attitudes, intellect, ruthlessness, and significance…
As Service notes, but for contingencies that pushed history his
way, Lenin might have remained an anonymous exile; why it was
otherwise is adroitly argued throughout this superb biography.
*Booklist*
The most authoritative and well-rounded biography of Lenin yet
written—and the one that is, in its quiet way, the most horrifying.
Oxford historian Service (A History of Twentieth-Century Russia)
makes good use of Party and Presidential archives that were
previously closed to historians. The portrait that emerges
therefore has many elements that were either altogether unknown or
have only recently emerged… An important study that goes far in
tracing the roots of the dire legacy Communism bequeathed to the
third of mankind unfortunate enough to have suffered its rule.
*Kirkus Reviews*
Service knows as much about Lenin’s life as anybody around. What he
has done is to write a more personal biography of Lenin than has
ever been written before. A great deal of new material has come out
since 1991 or even a bit earlier, especially on Lenin’s personal
life—on his health, physical and psychic. The book enriches Lenin’s
life with detail and should be made widely available.
*Abbott Gleason, author of Totalitarianism*
There is nothing approaching Service’s book in Russian. In English,
no one has examined Lenin’s career as microscopically as Service or
attempted to bring the man and his works into a single and, at the
same time, comprehensive focus. Service makes quite clear the
inordinate costs of Lenin’s revolutionary activity for Russia and
the world. But he conveys this assessment by scrupulous
reconstruction of his subject’s career and careful criticism of
existing interpretations. This is the ablest, the most accurate,
and the most up-to-date treatment of the subject that we have, or
will have for a very long time.
*Martin Malia, author of Russia under Western Eyes*
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