The Young Lenin

“Fascinating . . . full of insight and a perceptive portrait of Lenin’s single-mindedness and his relentless, all-consuming drive towards revolution in Russia.” —The Guardian Combining Young Lenin and On Lenin in one volume, this is a fascinating political biography by Lenin’s fellow revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. Trotsky on Lenin brings together two long-out-of-print works in a single volume for the first time, providing an intimate and illuminating portrait of the Bolshevik leader by another of the twentieth century’s greatest revolutionaries. Written shortly after its subject’s death, On Lenin covers the period of revolutionary struggle leading up to 1917 as well as the early years of Bolshevik power. We see a man totally committed to the revolutionary cause, whose legacy was later corrupted under the Soviet Union’s Stalinist degeneration. Young Lenin, meanwhile, describes his early years and conversion to Marxism, dispelling many of the myths later created by Soviet hagiography in the process. This is the essential guide for anyone wanting to understand Lenin as a thinker, active revolutionary, and personality.

Should we humanize the world's most inhumane leaders? Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Mao Zedong. Kim Il Sung. Vladimir Lenin. These cruel dictators wrote their names on the pages of history in the blood of countless innocent victims. Yet they themselves were once young people searching for their place in the world, dealing with challenges many of us face—parental authority, education, romance, loss—and doing so in ways that might be uncomfortably familiar. Historian Brandon K. Gauthier has created a fascinating work—epic yet intimate, well-researched but immensely readable, clear-eyed and empathetic—looking at the lives of these six dictators, with a focus on their youths. We watch Lenin’s older brother executed at the hands of the Tsar’s police—an event that helped radicalize this overachieving high-schooler. We observe Stalin grappling with the death of his young, beautiful wife. We see Hitler’s mother mourning the loss of three young children—and determined that her first son to survive infancy would find his place in the world. The purpose isn’t to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but rather to treat them with the empathy they themselves too often lacked. We may prefer to hold such lives at arm’s length so as to demonize them at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were also human beings—and perhaps more relatable than we’d like.

In his book Lenin: How to Become a Leader, Vladlen Loginov, one of Russia's leading authorities on Vladimir Lenin, discusses the revolutionary leader’s early years, his family, his political awakening and subsequent activities. He reveals the beginnings of the creator of the world’s first socialist country, as well as the source of the future statesman's incredible willpower, his ability to influence people, his drive to succeed and his leadership qualities. All of these, the book demonstrates, were intrinsic to Lenin's character from a young age. In his research, Loginov uses new sources and previously unknown documents and memoirs, as well as archives of Russians in exile. Edited and introduced by Professor Geoffrey Swain.

Cosponsored by the Joint Committee for Slavic Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Russian Research Center of Harvard University. Bibliographical footnotes.

Traces the life of the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, who became the first head of the Soviet state.

Traces the transformation of Lenin's brother, Alexander Ulyanov, from student to terrorist and examines how a failed plot to assassinate the tsar and Alexander's subsequent execution shaped the ideals and motivations of Lenin.

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