Amazon.co.uk Review
Few political reputations have collapsed quite as quickly as that of Lenin, the ideological guru of Russian Communism, the hero of the revolution of October 1917, and the first leader of the Soviet Union. Just as the Berlin Wall was pulled to the ground, so were thousands of statues of Lenin toppled across Eastern Europe and the new Russia in the early 1990s. But now that the dust has settled, and the Cold War is over, historians can be more objective about the life and achievements of Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (Lenin was his adopted revolutionary name). Robert Service's book is the first major biography of Lenin for several decades and it benefits from the thaw that has opened up previously inaccessible material, particularly on Lenin's family and his medical history. Born into a wealthy family of landowners, lawyers and government officials, Lenin's revolutionary path was marked out when his elder brother was executed for his part in an assassination plot on the Tsar. From that point on, aided by his sisters, his wife and a loyal but argumentative band of Bolshevik followers, Lenin committed himself to the overthrow of the Tsarist regime, enduring exile, prison and ostracism in the process. This compelling and action-packed book brings Lenin and Leninism to life in a way that no previous account has managed to do. --
Miles Taylor
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
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. -- Martin Malia "New York Review of Books" (11/01/2001)
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