Lenin S Moscow

This memoir by a Comintern leader in the early Soviet Union is “a vital primary source . . . clear and unpretentious”(Ian Birchall, from the new preface). When Alfred Rosmer arrived in Russia in 1919, it was considered by millions to be the center of world revolution. It was also a society beleaguered by civil war and encircled by hostile powers seeking to snuff out the promise and potential the first successful workers’ revolution represented. It was in this context that revolutionaries from across the globe undertook the creation of the Communist International, hoping to forge an instrument to fan the flames of the struggle against global capitalism. In this gripping political memoir of his time in Moscow, Rosmer draws on his unique perspective as both a delegate to the Comintern and as a member of its Executive Committee to paint a stunning picture of the early years of Soviet rule. From the debates sparked by the publication of Lenin’s State and Revolution and Left-Wing Communism to the efforts of the International to extend its influence beyond Europe with the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku, Rosmer documents key developments with an unparalleled clarity of vision and offers invaluable insights.

Ending a two-hundred-year tsarist regime and bringing communism to the masses, Vladimir Lenin changed not only Russia, but also the world’s political climate. Using source documents and photos, this text discusses the major events of the Russian Revolution and its consequences in a way that makes the concepts clear, concise, and interesting to students.

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.

Lenin's most important and controversial theoretical text Lenin’s booklet The State and Revolution struck the world of Marxist theory like a lightning bolt. Written in the months running up to the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin turned the traditional socialist concept of the state on its head, arguing for the need to smash the organs of the bourgeois state to create a ‘semi-state’ of soviets, or workers’ councils, in which ordinary people would take on the functions of the state machine in a new and radically democratic manner. This new edition includes a substantial introduction by renowned theorist Antonio Negri, who argues for the continued relevance of these ideas.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.