Lenin: A Biography

By Robert Service

Book Overview

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. Service's Lenin is a political colossus but also a believable human being. This biography stresses the importance of his supportive family and of its ethnic and cultural background. The author examines his education, upbringing, and the troubles of his early life to explain the emergence of a rebel whose devotion to destruction proved greater than his love for the "proletariat" he supposedly served. We see how his intellectual preoccupations and inner rage underwent volatile interaction and propelled his career from young Marxist activist to founder of the communist party and the Soviet state--and how he bequeathed to Russia a legacy of political oppression and social intimidation that has yet to be expunged.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674003306
• ISBN13: 9780674003309
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Making of a Despot

The archives in Russia have opened to scholars. This is a book by a Oxford professor. It is well researched, but would be quite difficult for a lay reader. Lenin is not at all likable and only Marxism meant anything to him except for his family, wife and mistress. So it is about the intellectual development of Leninism. For a man who hated the peasants and the uneducated masses, he still came to power. It is an example how an extremist minority can take power and hold it through terror. It is not a quick read and you will need to give yourself time on this book.

Biography of the "bookish fanatic" who led a revolution

Service is a British historian of Soviet Russian history who has written this quite good narrative of the life of Lenin. While not definitive, it is nevertheless the best synthesis of the political and personal life of LeninOne of the better reasons to read Service is that while he has no qualms about outlining the viciousness and brutality of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, he is also not a hard line ideologue. He is a historian and he takes history as he finds it. There is none of the strident cold-war dogmatism of Conquest or the russophobia of Pipes that often make their writings come uncomfortably close to political diatribes rather than analytical histories. Service walks the fine line between personal and political biography fairly well. He also has the added bonus of being a good narrative historian which makes this an immensily readable book.Lenin's early life is covered in good detail. What Service does well is to show how, after brother Alexander's excecution, the Ulyanovs were marginalized by the very class of society they had aspired to, and how this effected both Lenin and his sisters. Service goes on to show the interaction between Lenin and his female relatives and how this carried on throughout his life. Being a total biography- personal and political- the political side gets a bit of a short shrift at times. Lenin as shown as the "bookish fanatic" and hypocondriact who is all revolution all the time with little time to spare in life for other diversions. His single-mindedness is such that he dictates executions (never naming individuals just groups) to achieve his ends. What Service show best is how his temperament in childhood carried on to his political life- never brooking disagreement- throwing tantrums and denounciations- and rarely compromising.And yet Lenin is at heart, a middle class bourgeois in his social manners. His personal relationships with women are not especially notorious save for a life-long relationship with Inessa Armand who may or may not have been his mistress.Personal without being gossipy and showing Lenin's idiocincracies without being psychoanalytical, Service handles his biography well. All in all this is a highly readable, not perfect, but enjoyable biography of the life of one of the century's most notorious figures.

A fitting biography

Mr. Service's biography of Lenin is outstanding. The text is amazingly detailed (it describes his behavior patterns as a child, his arguments with fellow Bolsheviks behind closed doors, and his final year in stunning detail). Service also gives insight into Lenin's personal motivation that drove him to the October Revolution in 1917, as well as the future of the USSR as Lenin had envisaged (let's just say Stalinism was not foreseen). Additionally, the book is well written and easy to read; a must for anyone interested in Lenin, the Soviet Union, or the Bolshevik Revolution.

To Date, the Definitive Biography

Service has apparently examined, absorbed, and digested virtually all of the resources available before setting to work on the writing of this book. I rate it so highly for two reasons: it seems to be the definitive biography of one of the most influential political leaders of the 20th century, and, it anchors its reader in an historical context within which Lenin's influence can be seen in a proper perspective. For me, Service answers two separate but related questions: Why Lenin rather than someone else? Also, what was his subsequent impact on what became the U.S.S.R.? While answering these two questions, Service also helps his reader to understand at least some of the forces which still have influence, not only on the former member states of the U.S.S.R. but also on the contemporary world with which they continue to interact.

Terrific, Comprehensive Overview Of Lenin And His Ideas!

As a graduate student in sociology who studied the works of Karl Marx, I was always struck by the cruel irony that the only countries advancing his communist theories were exactly those places in which he least expected such revolutionary change; czarist Russia and feudal China. Marx had predicted that the western democracies, including England, France, and Germany, were the most likely locale for such proletariat uprisings. The fact that the two backward and predominantly rural countries of China and Russia were the only ones to succumb to the siren call of a worker's paradise owes much to the unique and extraordinary efforts of exceptional individuals in each of the two countries, each of whom through their own extraordinary insight, political savvy and exquisite timing successfully executed bloody overthrows of ancient regimes. This wonderfully written and masterfully told biography of the first of these two men on horseback, Russian Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) does great tribute to both the incredible genius and singularity of the man himself, while at the same time paints a wonderfully descriptive and quite comprehensive picture of the maelstrom of social, economic, and political circumstances surrounding the rise of Lenin's Bolshevik party to power. Lenin's importance in the subsequent developments both within the former Soviet Union and indeed throughout the modern world can hardly be exaggerated. And while we now self-confidently brag that the specter of communism is dead, the fact is that much of what Marx and later Lenin wrote regarding the continuing evolution of society continues to unfold. In what is commonly referred to as Marx's "Emiseration" theory, the gradual but inexorable drift of the two major political forces, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, toward increasing polarization and the eventual erosion of the large middle class separating them would lead to increasing concentration of wealth and widespread impoverishment as the owners of industry and corporations became more and more powerful and less and less accountable. Many observing the contemporary creation of a permanent "underclass" in modern democratic societies in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany as well as the slide of many in the middle class toward economic uncertainty and insecurity remember Marx's prognostications nervously. Perhaps, they say, we have celebrated the final victory over communism too soon. In this fashion, Service's wonderful book about Lenin and his ideas provides the reader with a terrific understanding of his biographical roots, his philosophical concerns, and his social, economic, and political agenda. Whether one gives any credence to Marxian thought or to Lenin's revisions to this theory of scientific socialism, one must give credit to the quality of mind that conceived of such a mind-boggling overthrow of the powers that be, with little to work with but a rag-tag bunch of political malcontents and committed party members t

An Excellent Portayal

Robert Service paints the most in-depth portrait of the life of Lenin that I have ever read. He takes readers no only through the trials and tribulations of Lenin's everyday life, but also into an analyzed look into his beliefs and interpretations of Marxism that were the foundations of his life. Service keeps the reader enthralled in his book with an intelligent and imaginative writing style that did not let me put his book down. Being a student in Russian studies, I was thoroughly impressed by Service's account of one of the most influential character's in history. Readers should know that this book not only covers Lenin's life, but also the history of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and the theory of Marxism and Communism. Those who are not familiar with these subjects may find the book difficult to read since it assumes a lot of knowledge from the reader. However, those who know Russia will find the book extremely insightful.