The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive

by Vladimir Lenin

Book Overview

Was Lenin a visionary whose ideals were subverted by his followers? Or was he a cynical misanthrope, even crueler than Stalin? This book, which contains newly released documents from the Lenin archive in Russia, lays bare Lenin the man and the politician, leaving little doubt that he was a ruthless and manipulative leader who used terror, subversion, and persecution to achieve his goals.

Edited and introduced by the eminent scholar Richard...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300076622
• ISBN13: 9780300076622
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Provides Documentation of the True Character of Lenin

While this is a slender volume, it provides very important documentary evidence of what had been hinted at and alluded to previously. The criminal nature of the Soviet Union can no longer be explained away as a corruption by Stalin of the pure and noble ideology of Lenin. The documents provided here clearly demonstrate Lenin's criminality and his role in building the terror state that was the USSR. Dr. Richard Pipes, a great scholar on Soviet history, has done a great service for us in putting this material together so concisely and powerfully. It is another important volume in the Annals of Communism series that I cannot praise enough. Dr. Pipes provides an introduction and a biographical sketch of Lenin, a few pictures, commentary on the importance of each document. The documents themselves are often excerpts while many are presented in full translation. There are a couple of them also provided in the original by a photograph of the actual document.This is a vital book in understanding the origins of the Soviet Union and the nature of the relationships among the founders of what led to so many horrors and so many deaths.

Necessary correction.

For many people from the left, Stalin was the ultimate gravedigger of the Revolution (Trotsky).The first one was Lenin, by creating a one party state ruled by him.One should remember that in the free elections of 1919 in Russia, the bolshevik party got only a good 17% of the votes. But Lenin kept his power. As Tomsky said : there was only one party, the others were in prison.Pipes' picture is all too real: Lenin was - and there are reasons for it : his brother's death for instance - a cynical, ruthless, aggressive agitator, who despised humanity and the workers to whom he told he was to create a paradise for them.He understood that farmers and industrial workers saw only their own interests, not his: to create a new society with new human beings.The results of his policies were dreadful: the USSR stopped to communicate health statistics to the WHO in the seventies, because they were too disastrous.When I was in Moscow, an important person in Russia (I saw recently a quote from him in an international newspaper) told me the following joke: why are Lenin's statues on the market place of every village? Because his arm indicates where vodka is sold. That was the future of the country.No, Julia Voznesenskaya is more than right: communism was the power of the soviets and the alcoholisation of the country (The women's Decameron).I recommend this necessary political essay to everybody.

An Excelent book to start a biography of Lenin

This book shows genuine documents, notes and other documents signed or sent to Lenin through out his life. This book is a good starting place for any history student doing a biographical essay of Lenin's life. Lenin is portrayed here as he really was. The documents show Lenin, ordering mass executions, conspirations and many other acts of terror which truly award him as the genuine creator of 'totalitarism'in the 20th century. Through the documents in the book one can see the pattern from which future communist and nazi dictators adopted Lenin's model of a totalitarian regime. After reading the book one can truly say that either Hitler, Stalin, Castro and many other dictators were only followers of Lenin's model of a totalitarian regime (in the domestic sphere and in the international area as well).

The side of Lenin history should remember.

This book uncovers the true side of Vladimir Lenin and at the same time the book proves that very few was known about Lenin. Historians usually tend to focus more on Stalin as the totalitarian man in Russian history, however Lenin was the man who set all the patterns of totalitarism in the 20 th century. The documents in the book show the different facets of Lenin's life. Lenin is shown as the political ganster who trade the gold of churches in Europe without any care for his country's famine. Lenin is also shown as the criminal who murdered and repressed sectors of the population to set an example among the population. In particular I think the book provides a good source to use for a future biography of Lenin.

History should remember Lenin as the book presents him.

A review in simple words. The book reveals a Lenin like I have not read in any other book. The Lenin history should remember is the Lenin studied through his personal documents as the book shows. Although as the book explains, an even darker side of Lenin is still to be revealed as soon as more historian access the presidential archives in Russia. Lenin through his own documents reveals himself as man who scorned his own people, an opportunist, a murder and a master of terror and manipulation. I would also like to add that thanks to historians such as Richard Pipes, history will always reveal the true face of the master of the first terror state of this century. My admiration for Richard Pipes.