Lenin: A New Biography

by Dmitri Volkogonov

Overview

Dmitri Volkogonov, the special assistant to Boris Yeltsin, uses secret Soviet archives to shift the perspective of Lenin’s time as a leader, revealing the Founding Father as a cruel totalitarian responsible for some of the worst moments in the Soviet state.

In a biography that drastically changes the perception of Vladimir Lenin, a Soviet revolutionary, politician, and political theorist, numerous secrets are exposed from previously off-limits KGB archives.

After three years of research through more than 3,700 once-secret documents, Volkogonov reveals the information found in the system concerning Lenin and his legacy, painting a compelling, shocking story about the Soviet founding father and the system he created.

From the creation of concentration camps to brutal repression of church and the media, and the strategic cultivation of a cult of personality, Lenin reveals the truth behind the cruel and totalitarian leader’s past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476764849
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	10/12/2013
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Dmitry Antonovich Volkogonov was a Soviet and Russian historian and colonel general who was head of the Soviet military's psychological warfare department.

Editorial Reviews

In a notably revelatory biography, Volkogonov presents the most compelling evidence to date that Lenin, not Stalin, was the true father of Soviet totalitarianism. The author draws heavily on newly declassified KGB archives that he oversees as special assistant to President Boris Yeltsin. Quoting extensively from Lenin's once top-secret communications, Volkogonov shows that Lenin personally created a system of terror that laid the foundations for Stalin's dictatorship. We see how Lenin created the omnipotent Cheka, or political police, and immersed himself in its daily activities; launched an onslaught against religious institutions; initiated systematic extermination of the land-owning peasantry, or kulaks; and ordered the murder of Nicholas II and his family, then commended the executioners. Historian and former Soviet General Volkogonov (Stalin) provides new details on Germany's covert financing of the Bolshevik Party and, on a more personal note, of Lenin's 10-year affair with Inessa Armand, a relationship his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, tolerated. Volkogonov's narrative is indispensable for understanding the Bolshevik coup, their crushing of the democratic opposition and the tragic aftermath. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Director of the Institute of Military History until the 1988 publication of his critical Stalin (LJ 9/15/91) forced his resignation, Volkogonov is now chair of the presidential committee examining formerly classified State and Party archives. As such, he is in an excellent position to provide a revisionist view of Lenin from the inside, and he delivers. From the beginning, Volkogonov challenges the assumption that Lenin's legacy was perverted by Stalin, documenting in detail how "on every point-peace, land, liberty, Constituent Assembly, freedom of the press and all the rest-[the Bolsheviks'] promises rapidly changed into cruelty, limitation, alteration, a different `reading' or outright denial." Accounts of Lenin's cooperation with Germany during World War I and of the new government's using funds to further revolution abroad even as millions of citizens starved are among the book's most chilling passages. Ocassionally, Volkogonov hammers home a point overmuch, but that is to be expected of a disillusioned man with an important message. A sobering and authoritative book; highly recommended.-Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

Library Journal