Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is among the most enigmatic and influential figures of the twentieth century. While his life and work are crucial to any understanding of modern history and the socialist movement, generations of writers on the left and the right have seen fit to embalm him endlessly with superficial analysis or dreary dogma. Now, after the fall of the Soviet Union and “actually-existing” socialism, it is possible to consider Lenin afresh, with sober senses trained on his historical context and how it shaped his theoretical and political contributions. Reconstructing Lenin, four decades in the making and now available in English for the first time, is an attempt to do just that.

Tamás Krausz, an esteemed Hungarian scholar writing in the tradition of György Lukács, Ferenc Tokei, and István Mészáros, makes a major contribution to a growing field of contemporary Lenin studies. This rich and penetrating account reveals Lenin busy at the work of revolution, his thought shaped by immediate political events but never straying far from a coherent theoretical perspective. Krausz balances detailed descriptions of Lenin’s time and place with lucid explications of his intellectual development, covering a range of topics like war and revolution, dictatorship and democracy, socialism and utopianism.Reconstructing Lenin will change the way you look at a man and a movement; it will also introduce the English-speaking world to a profound radical scholar.

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Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is among the most enigmatic and influential figures of the twentieth century. While his life and work are crucial to any understanding of modern history and the socialist movement, generations of writers on the left and the right have seen fit to embalm him endlessly with superficial analysis or dreary dogma. Now, after the fall of the Soviet Union and “actually-existing” socialism, it is possible to consider Lenin afresh, with sober senses trained on his historical context and how it shaped his theoretical and political contributions. Reconstructing Lenin, four decades in the making and now available in English for the first time, is an attempt to do just that.

Tamás Krausz, an esteemed Hungarian scholar writing in the tradition of György Lukács, Ferenc Tokei, and István Mészáros, makes a major contribution to a growing field of contemporary Lenin studies. This rich and penetrating account reveals Lenin busy at the work of revolution, his thought shaped by immediate political events but never straying far from a coherent theoretical perspective. Krausz balances detailed descriptions of Lenin’s time and place with lucid explications of his intellectual development, covering a range of topics like war and revolution, dictatorship and democracy, socialism and utopianism.Reconstructing Lenin will change the way you look at a man and a movement; it will also introduce the English-speaking world to a profound radical scholar.

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Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography

Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography

Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography

Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography

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Overview

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is among the most enigmatic and influential figures of the twentieth century. While his life and work are crucial to any understanding of modern history and the socialist movement, generations of writers on the left and the right have seen fit to embalm him endlessly with superficial analysis or dreary dogma. Now, after the fall of the Soviet Union and “actually-existing” socialism, it is possible to consider Lenin afresh, with sober senses trained on his historical context and how it shaped his theoretical and political contributions. Reconstructing Lenin, four decades in the making and now available in English for the first time, is an attempt to do just that.

Tamás Krausz, an esteemed Hungarian scholar writing in the tradition of György Lukács, Ferenc Tokei, and István Mészáros, makes a major contribution to a growing field of contemporary Lenin studies. This rich and penetrating account reveals Lenin busy at the work of revolution, his thought shaped by immediate political events but never straying far from a coherent theoretical perspective. Krausz balances detailed descriptions of Lenin’s time and place with lucid explications of his intellectual development, covering a range of topics like war and revolution, dictatorship and democracy, socialism and utopianism.Reconstructing Lenin will change the way you look at a man and a movement; it will also introduce the English-speaking world to a profound radical scholar.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781583674499
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Publication date: 02/27/2015
Pages: 544
Product dimensions: 6.50(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

Table of Contents

Preface 9

1 Who Was Lenin? 23

Family 23

Education 30

The Personality of Lenin as a Young Man in Exile and as an Émigré 40

The 1905 Revolution and the Second Emigration 51

In Power 65

2 Russian Capitalism and the Revolution 77

The Challenges at the Turn of the Century 77

Break with Narodism 80

Break with Liberalism 84

The Historical Debate: The Nature of the Autocratic State 101

3 Organization and Revolution 111

Lenin's Bolshevism: Politics and Theory 111

Lenin and Bogdanov 125

4 The War and the National Question 143

Disintegration and Dialectics 143

Lenin and the Great War 152

The National Question and National Self-Determination-"Two Cultures" 162

5 The State and Revolution 177

The State and Revolution: Theoretical Background 185

The Philosophy of the October Revolution: A Critical Appraisal of the Modern State and Parliamentarism 190

Revolution and State: The Functional Alternative 197

6 Dictatorship and Democracy in Practice 209

The Dissolution of the All-Russia Constituent Assembly 209

Violence and Terror: Causes and Consequences 233

The 1922 Wave of Repression: Ending the Civil War 242

Lenin and the Pogroms 255

7 World Revolution: Method and Myth 281

The Origin of the Problem 281

The Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Patriotism 286

The Polish-Soviet War 294

Messianic Leftism 304

8 The Theory of Socialism-Possibility Or Utopia? 311

The Conceptual Origins of Socialism 312

From Market Economy to War Communism 315

NEP vs. War Communism-Irreconcilable Contradictions 325

The Nature of Power and Party Dictatorship 328

The Period of Transition-"State Capitalism" 335

Bureaucratic Centralism and the Thermidorian Alternative 338

The Theory of Socialism and Its Systemic Coherencies 346

Summary Comments in Place of a Postscript 355

Chronology of Russian History, 1917-1924 372

Biographical Sketches 396

List of Photographs and Illustrations 435

Bibliography 437

Notes 452

Index 539

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