Front cover image for Lenin : a biography

Lenin : a biography

Robert Service (Author)
"Lenin's politics continue to reverberate around the world even after the end of the USSR. His name elicits revulsion and reverence, yet Lenin the man remains largely a mystery. This biography shows us Lenin as we have never seen him, in his full complexity as revolutionary, political leader, thinker, and private person. Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870, the son of a schools inspector and a doctor's daughter, Lenin was to become the greatest single force in the Soviet revolution--and perhaps the most influential politician of the twentieth century. Drawing on sources only recently discovered, Robert Service explores the social, cultural, and political catalysts for Lenin's explosion into global prominence. His book gives us the vast panorama of Russia in that awesome vortex of change from tsarism's collapse to the establishment of the communist one-party state. Through the prism of Lenin's career, Service focuses on dictatorship, the Marxist revolutionary dream, civil war, and interwar European politics. And we are shown how Lenin, despite the hardships he inflicted, was widely mourned upon his death in 1924"--Publisher's description
Print Book, English, 2000
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000
collective biographies
xxv, 561 pages, [32] of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
9780674003309, 9780674008281, 0674003306, 0674008286
43311809
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