Rating: 
Summary: Biased, and heavily so
Review: A major disappointment for anyone looking for an objective and analyzing view of Lenins role in history. It seems the author is cunningly familiar with the old saying "if you can't beat them, join them". Full of details, it surely is, and while many are certainly accurate, the facts are a mish-mash mixed into a huge pot and drawn at random, put into the text and spiced up with personal "views". Already on page 2 the tone is readily set, "It is worth noting that both Lenin and his father lost their considerable mental powers much earlier than might be thought normal."; pointing out Lenins unfortunate disease and hinting insanity! If one can neglect and bias-adjust the book (not an easy task!), it contains several interesting facts! I strongly suggest ANY other book on Lenin though, if a more scientifical analysis is expected! ...
Rating: 
Summary: Lenin, The West Still Has A Blind Spot...
Review: As a history teacher, I find it appalling that anyone would write that this book is "biased" or that the fact that he was "dedicated to his cause" as a mitigating factor to his campaign of mass murder, erecting the conspiratorial police state, total destruction of the family, church, and freedom, and of course foisting the bankrupt theories of Marxism on an entire nation...the fact that this almost always requires mass murder should be revealing. The fact that anyone would in anyway mitigate anything done by Lenin is probably autobiographical...an enchantment with socialism...The story always seems to end the same way. The West, espeically the left, still has a blind side when it comes to utopianism. How many millions must be murdered before we get it. Read the book and learn....Read the Venona Secrets and about the GRU by Dr. Raymond Leonard. Good places to start.
Rating:
Summary: Lenin, The West Still Has A Blind Spot...
Review: As a history teacher, I find it appalling that anyone would write that this book is "biased" or that the fact that he was "dedicated to his cause" as a mitigating factor to his campaign of mass murder, erecting the conspiratorial police state, total destruction of the family, church, and freedom, and of course foisting the bankrupt theories of Marxism on an entire nation...the fact that this almost always requires mass murder should be revealing. The fact that anyone would in anyway mitigate anything done by Lenin is probably autobiographical...an enchantment with socialism...The story always seems to end the same way. The West, espeically the left, still has a blind side when it comes to utopianism. How many millions must be murdered before we get it. Read the book and learn....Read the Venona Secrets and about the GRU by Dr. Raymond Leonard. Good places to start.
Rating:
Summary: Volkogonov's book is one long diatribe against Bolshevism
Review: Before reading this book, it is necessary to understand the author's agenda in writing it. Following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, a substantial portion of the Russian population remained loyal to the Communist party, and many more loyal to the ideals of Lenin himself. Volkogonov tries to "break" the myth of Lenin in this book, in an attempt to fight any revival of Leninism in Russia. Thus, he attempts to link Stalinism with Lenin himself, arguing that the latter necessarily led to the former. With this in mind, it becomes easier to understand Volkogonov's style when writing this book. Much of the book is devoted to the atrocities committed by the Bolsheviks prior to the rise of Stalin, as well as Lenin's authoritarianism. That the early Bolsheviks committed atrocities should really come as no surprise given that Russia, in the early 20's, was gripped by a civil war, and that the White Army, sponsored by foreign imperialists, was by no means inno! cent of atrocities either. A war was being waged, and a fight to the death was taking place. That Volkogonov lists the violent and intolerant acts committed by the Bolsheviks to remain in power is to be expected. What is annoying, however, is the omission of the violent and intolerant acts committed by the White Army. One simply has to consider the massacre of workers that would have followed a White victory over Bolshevism. In other words, in Volkogonov's book, Bolshevism is stripped of its context, painting Lenin as a bloodthirsty tyrant without explaining the reasons behind Bolshevik authoritarianism and violence. Volkogonov's omissions serves his agenda well, but does little to obtain a balanced picture of Lenin as a leader. Volkogonov's moralising concerning the "virtues" of the old Tsarist regime is also tiresome. No mention of the authoritarianism of the Romanoff dynasty is made, nor of their own atrocities. For this reason, Lenin ends up being po! rtrayed as a tyrant in a vacuum. Volkogonov's book is use! ful to extract details of Lenin's life, but is utterly one-sided, and its analysis seriously deficient. Rather than serious history, this book reads like a political pamphlet. It is necessary to supplement this book with other biographies of Lenin in order to get a real picture of the father of the Bolsheviks.
Rating: 
Summary: The Most Evil Man Bertrand Russell Ever Met
Review: For years after Nikita Khruschev's famous "secret speech" in 1956 denouncing Stalin and some of his crimes, apologists for the USSR and its Communist system continued to claim that if only Lenin had lived longer, Soviet-style Communism would have evolved in a much more benign direction than it ultimately did under the bloodthirsty Stalin. This book, written by a formerly high-ranking member of the Soviet military establishment who himself believed this, tears this myth to shreds. By getting unprecendented access to secret Soviet archives, Volkogonov clearly shows that the criminal nature of the regime was instituted by Lenin and his associates from the first day they came to power. There never was an "idealistic", clean phase to the Bolshevik Revolution. The corruption and tyranny began at once. Although the author points out that Bolsehvism appeals to universal ideas of social justice, when Lenin called to turn the "imperialist war" (i.e. the First World War) into a "civil war", the writing was on the wall for anyone who wanted to see it that it was the Bolshevik's intention to tear Russian society apart, and not just provide the people "peace, land and bread" as Lenin also claimed in order to get the naive to support his agenda for revolution.
Lenin never had any intention to improve the lives of the Russian people because at a time of mass famine during the "War Communism" repression at the time of the Civil War after the October Revolution, the Bolshevik regime was sending millions of dollars out of the country in order to stir up revolutions in other countries while letting their own people starve. Lenin was only interested in political power leading to what he hoped would be "world revolution" and class struggle. All morality was subordinated to the goal of attaining and keeping power, and any deceit and violence was justifiable for these purposes.
I think it can be stated that Communism was the greatest fraud in history because millions of otherwise well-meaning people were conned by Lenin and his successors into supporting this gigantic criminal enterprise.
It should be pointed out that this book is not really a comprehensive biography of Lenin, but is rather the story of "Leninism" and the creation and consequences of the Leninist system that ran the USSR for over 70 years. Important events in Lenin's life before the October Revolution are skimmed over. For example Lenin's seminal work "What Is To Be Done" is simply mentioned in passing. However, in spite of this, the book is very worth reading, especially by someone who is not well-informed about Soviet history. Volkogonov, who died in 1995, warned that the perversion of morality that Lenin and Leninism brought to Russia did immense damage to the country and its people and this will make the rooting of truly democratic institutions in that country very difficult, in spite of the collapse of the Leninism system. This has proven prophetic as we now see Putin slowly restoring an authoritarian system in that country which has suffered so much in the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: this book is completly off the topic of lenin for a majority
Review: I had to read this book for a history project. why that it is titled a "biography" of Lenin, I do not know. four the majority of the time the author does not talk about lenin. this book should have been cut shorter or titled "Lenin: and all of his people".. it is a horrible book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: It is so depressing to read the reviews of apologists for perhaps the most brutal regieme in human history. That these well-fed, Western-educated hyprocrites will attempt to explain away Lenin's systematic murders, assaults on democracy and religion, and endless disregard for humanity is sickening. That Vologonov is slandered for holding a position is Yeltsin's government just shows how far desperate these people are to discredit this devastating wreckingball through the Lenin myth. After the first 100 pages (which are slow) this book takes off and makes for extraordinary reading.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, Lenin as a Man
Review: Now I have read a lot of accounts of Lenin's adventures, because I was born and raised in the Soviet Union. But in those accounts he had no character, or rather his character and the characters of everyone described by official sources, was a series of slogans: modest man, friend of the workers, trusted by the people, dedicated to the revolution. In this book fact come out, and the real Lenin does, too. Like many powerful political leaders, Lenin was born in a small provincial town, belonged to a minority or mixed ethnic group, and had a personal vendetta against the system he wanted to overthrow. Lenin's genealogy is complex and tangled. But this book finally reveals his multiplicitous ethnic origins: Russian, German, Sweedish, Jewish, and Kalmyk. Of this, as you might imagine, not a word was breathed in the Soviet Union, a country where ethnicity has supposedly become irrelevant (what a sad ideological joke!). To amount to anything in life Lenin needed to overcome his provincial roots, prejudice against minorities, and the stigma of being a brother of a criminal, who unsuccessfully tried to assassinated the Russian tsar. Lenin was a single-minded, driven individual. His life's goal was to overthrow the Russian government, ostensibly for the benefit of the workers and the downtrodden. He spared no effort, no political trick, and no cruelty to achieve this goal. Before he died in 1924, the civil war in Russia was won and the new Soviet state established. Lenin sowed the seeds of totalitarian dictatorship, using Karl Marx as ideological God, and himself as his chosen son who came to Russia to save the world from the evil of capitalism and to build paradise on Earth. When Lenin died, a special tomb was constructed to preserve his body and put it on public display, where it still lies, never mind Lenin's request to be burried next to his mother in a cemetery. In life Lenin was a dictator, and the only person who effectively stood up to him was his mother-in-law. His own wife was less successful and had to put up with Lenin's long love affair with Inessa Armand. The book is very factual and tends to bog down in details. But it is also full of valuable information and dispells any myth of Lenin as god-like, flawless human being that communists made him out to be.
Rating:
Summary: An updated biography de-mythologizing Lenin
Review: Readers are now treated to an updated biography of Lenin,
with a work that includes all the information about him in the
once top-secret Soviet archives. The author, Dmitri Volkogonov,
was a former Director of the Institute of Military History in
Russia and a Colonel-General in the army. He now is a special
assistant to Boris Yeltsin and chairman of the presidential
commission examining Soviet archives. Volkogonov has also
authored two other works on Stalin and Trotsky.
In those days before perestroika, Lenin was considered
by the people almost as a god and the principal architect of
a communist state. He attempted to construct the praxis that
Marx had thought of as an ideology. However, the secret Lenin
archives have now been opened, containing many unpublished
documents of Lenin. Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin has been de-
mythologized. He built up the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Instead of a society of equals, the state now takes absolute
power in an interim stage towards the communist utopia. All
this was known; what was not known were the means by which
Lenin tried to achieve this: violence to attain and spread
communist ideology not only throughout the Soviet Union, but
also to neighboring countries; his treachery towards even
his once close friends and colleagues. Likewise, the author
points out how communist bureacracy started and spread through
the years, breeding corruption in government institutions
and structures.
Unlike many biographies, the work of Volkogonov is light
reading, but it is well-documented. If you wish to find out
the long-hidden truth about Lenin and the genesis of the now-
defunct Soviet state, this book is for you.
Rating:
Summary: A first rate reexamination of Lenin
Review: Simply put, the others below who write of Volkogonov as some mere right wing pedant are far from any truth in the matter. Volkogonov was brought up and schooled in the marxian tradition and lost it honestly, through discovery. Having been intersted historically in Lenin for over fifteen years, I find any conclusion other than Volkogonov's conclusions about Lenin to be simple exercises in propoganda. Let there be no doubt- the two others who wrote about Volkogonov are either amateurs on the subject and bluntly do not know what they are speaking about, or they are hacks in some form or another and are seeking to conceal truth by means of the process that Orwell made so plain in his "Politics and the English Language". The only people who would disagree with as reasonable a conclusion as Volkogonov's fascinating bio of Lenin are either fools or liers. This book is excellent. Add it to your collection.
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