Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror

If Lenin had not been on the scene, would there have been a Bolshevik/Communist Revolution in Russia? Likely not. If Lenin had not been the "master of terror" that he was, would there have been the purges and famines of Stalin with their tens of millions of victims? Likely not. One can make a respectable argument that Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a/k/a Lenin, influenced the history of the twentieth century more than any other person, with the possible exception of Hitler.That was my reasoning in wanting to read Victor Sebestyen's biography, LENIN: THE MAN, THE DICTATOR, AND THE MASTER OF TERROR. After reading the book, I am even more persuaded by that reasoning. LENIN is a quite readable and historically responsible biography of the man. It is much more in the vein of a popular biography than an academic one. True, there are end-notes, but only nineteen pages of them. There also are footnotes on about every third page of text, but those should not be skipped as most contain interesting nuggets of information.Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (b. 1870, d. 1924) was born into an affluent middle-class family. The spark for the radicalization of Vladimir occurred when he was seventeen and his older brother was executed for his involvement in a plot to assassinate the Tsar. Once radicalized, Vladimir (who adopted the name "Lenin" in 1901) pursued a dictatorship of the proletariat with incredible single-mindedness. Even so, in his personal life, Lenin was a charming, relatively conservative, principled, bourgeois gentleman. In his political life, however, he was thoroughly unscrupulous.Here is one of Sebestyen's summary characterizations of Lenin: "In many ways he was a thoroughly modern political phenomenon -- the kind of demagogue familiar to us in Western democracies, as well as in dictatorships. In his quest for power, he promised people anything and everything. He offered simple solutions to complex problems. He lied unashamedly. * * * He justified himself on the basis that winning meant everything: the ends justified the means. * * * Lenin was the godfather of what commentators a century after his time call 'post-truth politics'. * * * He built a system based on the idea that political terror against opponents was justified for a greater end. It was perfected by Stalin, but the ideas were Lenin's."In addition to being an excellent biography of its subject, the book also provides a good 30,000-feet historical overview of the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Russian Civil War. And along the way, Sebestyen sprinkles dozens of fascinating anecdotes and trivia. Here is a sampling:* Vladimir Putin's grandfather, Spiridon, was the cook for Lenin at Gorki, the country estate where Lenin stayed when he wasn't in the Kremlin and where he died.* Lenin's maternal grandfather was a Jew, and his paternal grandmother was a Kalmyk (a Mongolian people). The Soviets airbrushed out those two aspects of Lenin's "non-Russian" heritage.* "The Sealed Train" refers to the arrangement by which, in March/April 1917, Germany whisked Lenin and fifty-nine other Bolsheviks from Switzerland to Russia (via Sweden and Finland) in order to further destabilize Russia and, Germany hoped, remove it from World War I. In Volume Two of "The World Crisis", Winston Churchill characterized the incident thusly: "The Germans turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed train like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia."* "There is no doubt that Lenin gave the order" that the imprisoned Tsar Nicholas II, his family (wife, fourteen-year-old son, and four daughters), and household (family physician, maid, cook, and valet) be butchered in July 1918.* Molotov, who served under both Lenin and Stalin (becoming for a time the second-most powerful man in the Soviet Union under the latter), said that both leaders "were hard men . . . harsh and stern. But without a doubt Lenin was harsher."

A good, general view back on the life of an individual who changed the world. This biography seems pretty accurate and is written in a lively, journalistic manner. Very good for people who are seeking some basic foundation for understanding the roots of both yesterday's Stalinist state and today's Russia of Putin.I liked that the author, Victor Sebestyen, kept close to his subject and did not stray too far afield into the morass of detail associated with the Russian Revolution or the communist party's broad rule under Lenin. Entire books have been written one or another specific acts or circumstances (for example, on the switch to New Economic Policy or the execution of the Czar's family) whereas here only a short chapter is needed and the biographical narrative is not allowed to bog down.A minor point: books published in the United States should convert metrics into our measurement system. Somehow the sentence "....a man of 157 centimetres, weighing 127 kilos, his body was shaped like a coupe..." p.441 does not fully come across to me.

magisterial.

This is a fascinating book. For Russians, Lenin became a secular saint and a God-like figure. He also had his apologists in the West, but this book shows that he was not that much different to Stalin. The author argues that Lenin was the Soviet Union’s, indispensable man. Without him, there would have been no second revolution in 1917, no Soviet Union, and no Stalin.The book focuses on Lenin’s personal life, including his ménage à trois with his wife, Nadya and his mistress, Inessa. It is a long book, and there is perhaps too much information on Lenin's domestic life. However, he was too ruthless to be likable. He is described as: “Secretive, suspicious, intolerant, acetic, intemperate.” He had a terrible temper, was a bully, and humiliated colleagues who disagreed with him.Lenin came from a prosperous family. His older brother was executed, while a university student, for attempting to assassinate the tsar. His family was then ostracized by local society and he grew to hate the bourgeoisie. Lenin then became radicalized and wanted revenge.The book helps explain the flaws in communism and why it ultimately failed. Lenin did not believe in Western-style democracy or capitalism. He was an atheist who stole the property of the church and killed any bishops and priests who objected. Lenin re-engineered Russian society and became a new type of despot. He created a new type of aristocracy, the Communist Party. He told his followers that they were the revolutionary vanguard, with greater insight and vision than ordinary people. His followers enjoyed the spoils of victory and felt entitled to special treatment after the revolution.Machiavelli invented the phrase “the ends justify the means.” This became the motto that Lenin lived by. However, it is not entirely clear where Lenin was trying to take Russia. We are told that Lenin was an intellectual with big ideas, but whatever he tried did not seem to work, apart from his use of terror. Propaganda turned Lenin into the first infallible communist leader. More were to follow: Stalin, Mao, the Kims, and Pol Pot. They all copied Lenin’s playbook. Lenin ruled using terror and lies. He censored the press. He abolished the legal system. Sebestyen writes that: “The structure of the police state had been established under Tsar Nicholas I in the 1820s.” Lenin, improved upon it. Lenin survived his time as a political prisoner in Siberia as a guest of the tsar. The Cheka, which was later renamed the KGB, would not have been so tolerant. Lenin murdered his opponents, including the Russian royal family.Without WW1, Lenin would not have become the leader of Russia. The tsarist regime collapsed in February 1917, while Lenin was living in obscurity in Zurich. Few people knew his name. The Germans wanted to get Russia out of the war, so they could focus their attention on the Western front. The Provisional Government that took over in February 1917 made the mistake of trying to continue an unpopular war. The Germans helped Lenin become Russia’s leader. They gave him safe conduct to the Baltic, from where he could travel on to Russia. He was intercepted by British intelligence officers on the Russian border, but they let him proceed after an interrogation. That turned out to be a colossal mistake. The Germans gave Lenin funds to start a political organization and stage a coup.In 1917 Lenin told the people that he offered “Peace, bread, land.” A great slogan, but he lied. Without Lenin’s ruthlessness, the Bolsheviks would not have achieved power. They did not have a lot of support. In the elections held for a Constituent Assembly in the autumn of 1917 – the last free ones until the 1990s – the Bolsheviks got 24% of the popular vote. Somehow, the Bolsheviks seized power and started eliminating their opponents.Lenin had few ideas about what to do once his coup succeeded. He told Leon Trotsky, ‘First we must seize power. Then we decide what to do with it.’ He dismissed experts as unnecessary, but he did not know how to run an economy let alone a business. I toured factories in Eastern Europe after the demise of the Soviet Union. To me, the central problem with the Soviet approach to business was that they did not understand the role and purpose of markets. They believed that if they changed the ownership of the factory productivity would improve. I discovered that productivity was actually very low in Eastern Europe during the Soviet era. Another problem was that their factories made things that people did not want to buy. Their firms had no need to keep up because they were protected from Western competition. East Germany was the industrial jewel in the communist’s crown, but 70% of its industrial capacity quickly disappeared in the 1990s. It quickly became obvious that East German cars were vastly inferior to West German cars.Lenin and the Communists liked factory workers but despised the Russian peasants. The Communists also had problems applying their Marxist theories to what was primarily a peasant economy. When there were serious food shortages in 1918, caused mainly by the collapse of the economy, Lenin’s response was to scapegoat the farmers and declare war on them. When the forcible seizure of grain only worsened the crisis, Lenin increased the terror.Lenin was a strongman in the Russian tradition. He wanted to hang, shoot and destroy anyone who stood in the Bolsheviks’ way. He believed that victory was not possible “without the very cruellest revolutionary terror.” The forced-labor camps, the one-party state, the prohibition of free and popular elections, the ban on internal party dissent. Lenin offered “simple solutions to complex problems.” He lied shamelessly and found scapegoats to transfer the blame for all problems. Once he had achieved control he would not relinquish it. ‘He desired the good but created evil.’ Sebestyen believes that the “worst of his evils was to have left a man like Stalin in a position to lead Russia after him. That was a historic crime.”Lenin died in January 1924 at the age of 53. According to the latest polls, Russians now consider Lenin only the fourth most outstanding man of all time, behind Stalin, Pushkin, and Vladimir Putin.

This biography is well researched and thoroughly documented. Citations abound. The best part: it's well-written. It's a detailed, readable account of one of history's most influential men. Lenin comes alive. He is not some larger-than-life mythical figure, nor some one-sided cardboard cutout. Lenin was a complex character. Evil to the core, for sure. And dangerous because, combined with that evil essence, Lenin added intelligence and a single-minded drive to succeed. Unfortunately for the world, he did. Fortunately for us, we have biographies like this to keep the whole story alive.