Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: The biography will be condemned by remaining True Believers. For this reason alone it should be read by all Americans. Because the author was a dedicated Leninist for most of his life, we can see how wrenching is his education to the truth of the ruthless dictatorship Lenin created and perpetuated. More people murdered in the name of an unattainable goal than by any other regime in the history of the world. And we think Hitler is evil! A must read to get a clear perspective on most of the 20th Century.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely biased
Review: This book is supposed to be an "objective" biography of Lenin, supported by some documents made public for the first time. However, it is apparent that the author's purpose is to condemn Lenin and the whole (former) Soviet concept. He attempts this by linking Stalin's regime with Lenin, claiming that the Stalinist era was the natural consequence of the bolshevic revolution. You can believe a biased statement like this only if you share the author's hatred for Soviet Russia.This is very obvious since no mention is made of the situation in Russia before 1917 under the Romanovs, and no serious political analysis is done to explain how and why Stalin attempted to cancel the revolution's achievements and dictate his own version of nationalist bolshevism, thus distorting and wrecking Lenin's dream and philosophy. It is also implied that the Russian Revolution was the work of a clan of ambitious and fascist people, instead of the collective achievement of a whole society as it really was. It should be noted that Volkogonov's distorted historical view is totaly different from what is generally believed by most historians today, which makes this subjective book of little value to the serious reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Lack of chronology and bias makes for a confusing read.
Review: This book jumps around a lot and has only a very loose structure. It does not give a chronological account of Lenin's life. On one page he jumps from 1917 to 1921 back to 1918 and then jumps to 1964 and Breshnev's reign. This in and of itself is not a problem, but Volkogonov does not connect a lot of his arguments and mearly skips around. Likewise, he often strays too far from his subject. Almost half of the book is devoted to explaining the lives and evnets of leaders other than Lenin. This ranges from Stalin to The Meneshevik, Martov. The leader will learn a great deal about many Soviet personalities, unfortunately Lenin is not necessarilly one of them. Volkogonov seems bent on radically changing the historical view of Lenin. At times, his bias compromises his work, and he tries to blame Lenin for all of the USSR's problems, including collectivization and many items usually associated with Stalin. In his quest to revolutionize history, the author dismisses many previous arguments. Unfortunately, he often does not give them proper attention. The work is interesting but fails to fairly treat the complex character of Lenin. There are many biographies of Lenin that are better than this one.
Rating:
Summary: Lack of chronology and bias makes for a confusing read.
Review: This book jumps around a lot and has only a very loose structure. It does not give a chronological account of Lenin's life. On one page he jumps from 1917 to 1921 back to 1918 and then jumps to 1964 and Breshnev's reign. This in and of itself is not a problem, but Volkogonov does not connect a lot of his arguments and mearly skips around. Likewise, he often strays too far from his subject. Almost half of the book is devoted to explaining the lives and evnets of leaders other than Lenin. This ranges from Stalin to The Meneshevik, Martov. The leader will learn a great deal about many Soviet personalities, unfortunately Lenin is not necessarilly one of them. Volkogonov seems bent on radically changing the historical view of Lenin. At times, his bias compromises his work, and he tries to blame Lenin for all of the USSR's problems, including collectivization and many items usually associated with Stalin. In his quest to revolutionize history, the author dismisses many previous arguments. Unfortunately, he often does not give them proper attention. The work is interesting but fails to fairly treat the complex character of Lenin. There are many biographies of Lenin that are better than this one.
Rating:
Summary: Lenin: A False Interpretation
Review: This book offers a radical departure from the traditional view of Lenin, but an unsubstantiated one. That its author is a special aide to the ten year virtual autocrat of modern Russia comes as no surprise. Evidence for the famously modest - a characteristic not disputed even by rabid critics such as David Shub - Lenin having consciously fostered his own personality cult is weak. And how do we know that the evidence is even genuine? How can Lenin have been a power hungry dictator when he offered Trotsky the leadership of the country after the 1917 revolution? And yes, he set up concentration camps - but the only task of the incipients was to grow their own food; a vital problem in a country ravaged by a civil war and the First World War before that was lack of food and for prisoners to grow their own was reasonable enough. Not until the reign of Stalin were they converted to the hell-holes of the famous gulag. Lenin was no dictator, as was proved by the fact that his views often failed to prevail upon the party - e.g initially at Brest Litovsk 1918. When he could not convince a majority, his policies were not implemented. As for the persecution of the all-powerful Orthodox Church, the head was not a priest but a diplomat made chair of the Holy Synod by order of the Tsar and the crucifixes and other relics confiscated and sold for grain were less important than the people who would have starved had they not been sold. The efforts of modern Russia to jettison the founding father of a productive and creative society are epitomised in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Topical History
Review: This book would be best for someone who already knowledgeable about the history of the Russian revolution. The book is organized topically, rather than chronologically, so it moved around in time. It is peopled with a host of characters, which were hard for me to keep straight. It did paint a vivid picture of Lenin. Someone already knowledgeable of the history would get must more from the book. For those who are not, reading a history first would be helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Topical History
Review: This book would be best for someone who already knowledgeable about the history of the Russian revolution. The book is organized topically, rather than chronologically, so it moved around in time. It is peopled with a host of characters, which were hard for me to keep straight. It did paint a vivid picture of Lenin. Someone already knowledgeable of the history would get must more from the book. For those who are not, reading a history first would be helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Good Biography...
Review: This is a very detailed, pretty interesting, and mainly fair biography of Lenin. It certainly does an excellent job in destroying the myth of Lenin as a benevolent figure, a myth that was believed by many, both in the former USSR and outside it. Using evidence from formerly secret documents, it demonstrates Lenin's true ruthlessness and eagerness to use terror to accomplish his goals. If anything, maybe, this book is a little biased AGAINST Lenin. Although Lenin was a terribly ruthless ruler, he was dedicated to the cause, and held power in the interests of advancing it. In order to totally refute the myth, the author sometimes places insufficient emphasis (in my opinion) on this point. Also, to some extent, Lenin's actions could have been a reaction to the circumstances his regime faced. Nevertheless, Lenin's actions can't really be justified, so the author is right in judging him harshly. Overall, the book is interesting and really illustrates the reality of Lenin and the Soviet system. It provides many facinating (and horrifying) details and first hand documents as well.
Rating:
Summary: Uninformative, one-sided, and dull
Review: This is a very poor book for anyone seeking to know about the life of V.I. Lenin. It was published in Russia by an employee of the current regime for the purpose of discrediting the Soviet past. It is an especially poor read for Westerners because it assumes the reader had been brought up in the Soviet school system and would thus already be very familiar with the events of Lenin's life. As a previous reviewer stated, much of the book doesn't even discuss Lenin. The few facts presented are surrounded by the biased and long-winded opinions of the author and make very dull reading. When reviewing this book, one has to consider its author. Dimitri Volkogonov spent much of his career in the Red Army as a Party hack who wrote very dull works that nobody read. These included the standard praise for Stalin's "genius" as the wartime leader. In 1989, he wrote his biography of Stalin which condemned the Soviet dictator as a tyrant and betrayer of Lenin's Revolution. In short, Volkogonov adjusted to the new political mood of the Gorbachev era. Finally, in 1994 Volkogonov (now in the pay of Boris Yeltsin's anti-Soviet regime), wrote this book, which condradicts his earlier work by portraying Lenin as Stalin's true role-model. Again he is simply serving his current masters in the Kremlin, who assigned him the task of attacking Soviet history. Volkogonov is simply a propagandist, and not even a principled one at that. Whether Stalinist or rabid anti-communist, he has remained only a mouthpiece for the current Kremlin bosses. His writings seek to indoctrinate, not educate. And while his bio of Stalin contained some new information for those readers willing to peel through the layers of rhetoric, Volkogonov's latest sermon cannot make even that claim. Don't waste your time with this book. Those seeking a good, though not very sympathetic, biography on Lenin should try Adam Ulam's _The Bolsheviks_, which has been reprinted recently.
Rating:
Summary: Anatomy of a Bleak Victory
Review: This volume appears to be an abridged version of a much longer work in Russian and though it is labelled as a biography is much less linear in format and chronology than one normally expects from this designation. This is however no drawback and around the main developments in Lenin's life the writer frequently jumps forward in time, and occasionally backwards, to explore the consequences, or antecedents, of specific decisions, policies and actions of Lenin and his circle. A degree of familiarity with the revolutionary period is assumed - not unreasonably in the case of a Russian readership - and a Western reader coming fresh to the subject might more profitably start elsewhere - "A People's Tragedy" by Orlando Figges being a safe bet. The author writes from the position of a disillusioned disciple and, as a Kremlin insider in both the Late-Soviet and Post-Soviet periods, he gives valuable insights into the difficulties of breaking away from orthodoxies of thought built up over decades - even a character as courageous as Gorbachev is seen from minutes of a 1983 Central Committee meeting to be unable to cope with the challenge of a mildly dissident stage-play. The book draws heavily on Soviet archives that were secret to the early 1990s and, though one must have some uncertainty as to how selectively the author has utilised them, the overall argument that there is a considerably greater degree of continuity between Leninist and Stalinist attitudes policies than has hitherto been recognised is developed very powerfully. The writer anchors Lenin's personality, and the development of his thought, in his family background, in the Russia of the late nineteenth century, and in the artificial world of political exile in the years preceding the revolution. The latter period comes across as Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" made flesh and one becomes uncomfortably aware that the endless theorising, sectarian infighting and pamphleteering of those years, conducted in conditions of comfort bordering on luxury, and divorced from any practical appreciation of actual conditions in Russia, made a later resort to extremist measures, not only easy, but perhaps inevitable. Brutality of thought and callousness in decision making comes easiest to those who have seen neither privation not bloodshed at first hand - and indeed one is struck by the extent to which Lenin managed to insulate himself personally from such realities to the very end of his life. The mechanics of establishing power and winning the Civil War are well described, with insights into personalities little known in the West providing many fascinating digressions on the way. Despite the horror, waste and tragedy involved in the Bolshevik victory however one is left with the disturbing reflection: "What was the Alternative?" - not just in the moral but in the pragmatic sense. The period between the February and October Revolutions had thrown up neither vision nor leadership of any lasting power and the various White factions that emerged from 1918 onwards were equally bankrupt in both competence and ideology. Against this background the triumph of Leninism - bleak, clear-sighted and single-minded - seems to have been all but inevitable.
| 
