Lenin And His Comrades

What was the real impact and significance of the October Revolution of 1917? This avowedly revisionist interpretation by a major Russian dissident seeks to place Lenin and those around him in the proper perspective. Since the takeover of Russia was the result of a coup d’état by a tiny minority of criminals that Yuri Felshtinsky doesn’t hesitate to call gangsters, the Communist regime was doomed from the start. Yuri Felshtinsky received a PhD in history from Rutgers University. His books include The Failure of the World Revolution (1991), Blowing up Russia (with Alexander Litvinenko, 2007), and The Corporation: Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin (with Vladimir Pribylovsky, 2008). He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

Service offers a history of communism, drawing the uncomfortable conclusion that the poverty and injustice that enabled its rise are still dangerously alive. Unsettling and compelling, this is a comprehensive study of one of the most important movements of the modern world.

Almost two decades have passed since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Robert Service, one of our finest historians of modern Russia, sets out to examine the history of communism throughout the world. His uncomfortable conclusion - and an important message for the twenty-first century – is that although communism in its original form is now dead or dying, the poverty and injustice that enabled its rise are still dangerously alive. Unsettling, compellingly written and brilliantly argued, this is a superb work of history and one that demands to be read. ‘Bears all the hallmarks of a classic work of historical literature ... the true international legacy of communism [is] analysed to magisterial effect in this exhilarating work’ Hwyel Williams New Statesman ‘One of the best-ever studies of the subject ... a remarkable accomplishment’ Economist ‘An outstanding book, written with grace and style’ Daily Telegraph ‘[A] brilliantly distilled world history of communism ... Confronted by Service's amazing array of evidence to show that communism could only ever have flourished under conditions of extreme and all-pervasive oppression, only the determinedly softheaded would try to argue with him’ Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

Reads like a true crime investigation. Hard-hitting anti-communist slant by dissident critic of the communist regime.

Boris Souvarine moved from communism, in the first years of the Soviet régime, to anti-communism by the 1930s and throughout the rest of his long life. This book gives us a new and original perspective on the period that runs from the Russian Revolution to the 1950s and allows us to better understand that era. The documents come from the Boris Souvarine Collection consisting of his working notes, press clippings, and documentation concerning East-West relations collected by Souvarine.

This presentation of previously unpublished documents from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives draws a dramatic picture of the Russian Civil War and the establishment of the Communist dictatorship as witnessed by members of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, or Mensheviks. When the opposing Bolsheviks consolidated their power to emerge as the ruling party of the 1917 revolution, the political influence of the Mensheviks was swept away, and most were driven to exile in Siberia. The historic power struggle that raged as the two parties vied for supremacy in postimperial Russia comes to light through these accounts—not official party statements but vivid reports, letters, and eyewitness testimonies by Mensheviks, ordinary citizens from diverse walks of life and different parts of the Soviet Union. Together, these materials create a mosaic of individual portraits and circumstances that illustrate the conflicts, struggles, and repression during the period of Soviet politics under Lenin. The primary source documents, skillfully edited and translated by Vladimir N. Brovkin, show the formation of a new mentality among Communist rulers and a new relationship to the workers, one that replaced multiparty competition with unquestioning obedience, military discipline, and intolerance.

The reminiscences in this volume cover the period 1894 to 1917. Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (1869-1939) was the wife of V. I. Lenin, was an old member of the Communist Party, a Soviet statesman and a distinguished educator. She was born in St. Petersburg, where she began her revolutionary career. Krupskaya is the author of a number of books on questions of education and pedagogics. Her Reminiscences of Lenin were written over a number of years and published in parts at different times. The present volume is the most complete of all her reminiscences of Lenin hitherto published.