Lenin: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: Lenin: A Biography
Review: I really wanted to give this excellent biography five stars (as if my opinion really matters), but I just can't get over the fact that this is a largely political work. Of course, Lenin was a largely political man, but he was a man nonetheless. Service, who is a professor of political science, does an exceptional job with the details of Lenin's political development and his infamous accomplishments, but his handling of the more personal aspects of his life and the much more subtle cultural and historical contexts feels incomplete. It's about time that an important biography of Lenin FINALLY suggests that the execution of his brother Alexander probably led to his utter obsession with bringing down the Romanovs. Lenin, above all, was more consumed with destruction, with replacing Old Russia with something new and "scientific", than with elevating the lives of the oppressed. Service makes this point a centerpiece of his thesis and I think he's dead on. I only wish he'd done a more careful exegesis of Lenin's psychological motivation for his radicalism.

Rating:
Summary: A fitting biography
Review: Mr. Service's biography of Lenin is outstanding. The text is amazingly detailed (it describes his behavior patterns as a child, his arguments with fellow Bolsheviks behind closed doors, and his final year in stunning detail). Service also gives insight into Lenin's personal motivation that drove him to the October Revolution in 1917, as well as the future of the USSR as Lenin had envisaged (let's just say Stalinism was not foreseen). Additionally, the book is well written and easy to read; a must for anyone interested in Lenin, the Soviet Union, or the Bolshevik Revolution.

Rating:
Summary: A very good book misses being great
Review: No doubt we owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Service. He has given us a badly needed new biography of this very important figure, one that incorporates some materials held secret in Russia for over 80 years. What is more, the work is quite complete for a shortened biography (he has a 3 volume version), with a few odd exceptions. Service performs on the whole admirably. His work is without major errors, and he gives us Lenin from start to finish. In workmanlike fashion, he moves chronologically through this active life, addressing the familiar issues with common sense. The style is pedestrian, but, no pun intended, serviceable. If you want to get to know Lenin in one volume, this is the one to choose.
Yet, for all of that, there are a number of areas, a few of them quite significant, where this book is ultimately unsatisfying. I found it odd, for example, that there is not a word in the book about the peculiar Bauman affair in 1904. Bauman (for whom the most famous technical institute in Moscow is named) was a disgusting character who seduced and impregnated a married fellow Bolshevik, and then boasted about it, ridiculing her in public. When her appeals to him for help fell on deaf ears, she appealed to the Party, and ultimately committed suicide. Lenin's decision to laugh this off, as the essentially harmless prank of one of his own, reveals quite early Lenin's basically amoral nature. Similarly, the dispute with the Mensheviks over "Exes", ie armed robberies to `expropriate the expropriators', as Lenin infelicitously put it, is hardly addressed, even though this issue was not insignificant. It turned on the question of the Party's reputation (and, consequently, its potential for recruitment and its appeal to society) - was it to be a high-minded, even idealistic political organ, or was it to be besmirched by these activities, and thus identified with gangsters and their base criminality? Lenin recognized the Menshevik point, in principle, but actually did nothing to discourage Stalin's and others' gangsterism (indeed, quite the opposite) - again, an episode revealing Lenin's absence of moral standard. Service also ignores the last act of the suppression of the Constituent Assembly on Jan. 6 (OS), when the Bolsheviks gunned down the small demonstration of support, killing 20. (To be fair, this episode is hardly remembered today by anyone, including the most famous names in the writing of Russian history. Instead, they almost uniformly disparage Russian society, particularly the intelligentsia, for cowardice and irresolution in the apparent absence of any support for the Assembly. True, the demonstration was not massive, but those who marched knew, surely, what was likely awaiting them. These victims bear the conscience of Russia's commitment to its first democratic institution, and it is just shameful to ignore or forget them.) Or, the infamous expulsion of the flower of Russian intellectual life, the nearly 300 academics, world-renown scholars, and cultural figures in 1922 who, in a moment of uncharacteristic generosity, were not murdered on the spot, but actually permitted to take two pieces of clothing into permanent exile.
Inclusion of these relatively minor matters might have undermined the work's brevity and accessibility. Perhaps, but what is one to make of more major omissions? In particular, it can be shown that Lenin not only was not disturbed by the development of the Civil War, but actually welcomed and encouraged it. In fact, it is not too much to say that he, far more than any other single individual, caused it. In a series of decrees and directives, he made it impossible for the former "ruling classes", including the only nascent bourgeoisie, to live. Their turn to active resistance was most often undertaken very reluctantly (the sorry defense of the Constituent Assembly is but one example), an act of desperation and a simple matter of life and death, something to which they were goaded and prodded. Lenin was even surprised that it took so long. There is no evidence that Service is aware of the proof of this in Stephan Courtois' "Black Book of Communism" and Nicolas Werth's book-length article there on Russia.
Further, while Service cites some chilling documentation on Lenin's sanguinary attack on the church, he does not detail the well-known incident at Shuya, the most revealing of them all. It was this that served as the trigger for his shockingly violent rhetoric, long concealed, calling for the destruction of the church and the murder of its ecclesiastics. Again, see Werth.
It is in matters of interpretation that the reader is left most dissatisfied. While there is plenty of evidence scattered throughout the book to damn Lenin as completely amoral, the reader comes away from the book without a clear statement or unequivocal understanding of this crucial insight. In fact, I would argue that there is something pathological at work in a man who is absolutely incapable of any introspection, a pathology that remains unidentified and uninvestigated by Service. To cite the most critical example, there is no evidence that Lenin ever questioned, much less regretted, making the Revolution, despite the fact that it had violated all of his own theoretical principles. Yet, early on, certainly by 1920, it was possible to see that the Mensheviks were right in opposing it. It was catastrophic: Mass murder and massive starvation were its direct result. For Lenin, though, ideology takes second place to reality. This unstable balance between theory and necessity is crucial to understanding Lenin. And, the pathology which permits it, without internal debate or vacillation, had devastating implications for his subjects, but it is not explored.
Lenin's view of Russia as nothing but a backwater, only good for igniting the real revolution in the west, and of Russians as incompetent bunglers is never given the emphasis it deserves, nor the ultimate irony of his remaining in state on Red Square. Were it so, Service would perhaps see this, and the current condition of Russia, as possibly the ultimate revenge of history.

Rating:
Summary: Lenin: A Biography
Review: Service (history, St. Anthony's College, Oxford) endeavors to rehabilitate Lenin, whose fame in his own homeland since the collapse of the USSR has been badly bruised. Not only are there studies that portray Lenin as the architect of 20th-century violence, he is considered a failed state builder whose actions ultimately led to the 1991 debacle. On a conceptual level, the author will need to compete with the works of Martin Malia, Alexander Solzhenitsin, and Dmitri Volkoganov. Although Service contends that in Soviet hagiography Lenin's biographies were taboo, the author in some parts skirts the danger of falling into an overglorified Sovietlike portrait of the first Bolshevik. This is a full political biography that covers Lenin's life from birth in Simbirsk to the end at Gorki. Regardless of the pro-Leninist tilt, this is a good read, offering a great deal about a life that since the beginning of the USSR has been abused by partisans of both sides. Surprisingly there is no reference to Stefan Possony's biography (Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary, CH, Jul'64.) Well-footnoted and illustrated and containing a reasonably good bibliography and sufficient index, this book is recommended for all public and college libraries.

Rating:
Summary: Biography of the "bookish fanatic" who led a revolution
Review: Service is a British historian of Soviet Russian history who has written this quite good narrative of the life of Lenin. While not definitive, it is nevertheless the best synthesis of the political and personal life of Lenin

One of the better reasons to read Service is that while he has no qualms about outlining the viciousness and brutality of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, he is also not a hard line ideologue. He is a historian and he takes history as he finds it. There is none of the strident cold-war dogmatism of Conquest or the russophobia of Pipes that often make their writings come uncomfortably close to political diatribes rather than analytical histories.

Service walks the fine line between personal and political biography fairly well. He also has the added bonus of being a good narrative historian which makes this an immensily readable book.

Lenin's early life is covered in good detail. What Service does well is to show how, after brother Alexander's excecution, the Ulyanovs were marginalized by the very class of society they had aspired to, and how this effected both Lenin and his sisters. Service goes on to show the interaction between Lenin and his female relatives and how this carried on throughout his life.

Being a total biography- personal and political- the political side gets a bit of a short shrift at times. Lenin as shown as the "bookish fanatic" and hypocondriact who is all revolution all the time with little time to spare in life for other diversions.

His single-mindedness is such that he dictates executions (never naming individuals just groups) to achieve his ends. What Service show best is how his temperament in childhood carried on to his political life- never brooking disagreement- throwing tantrums and denounciations- and rarely compromising.

And yet Lenin is at heart, a middle class bourgeois in his social manners. His personal relationships with women are not especially notorious save for a life-long relationship with Inessa Armand who may or may not have been his mistress.

Personal without being gossipy and showing Lenin's idiocincracies without being psychoanalytical, Service handles his biography well. All in all this is a highly readable, not perfect, but enjoyable biography of the life of one of the century's most notorious figures.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but biased
Review: The author gives us great amounts of detail information of Lenin's younger and older life. However, the attempt to make him a "great" man (word or deed) was not worthy of the book. What I wanted to discover was WHY such a non-entity, one who rarely was in his own country, would be remembered as a savior despite having imposed the most tyrannical regime that ever existed on hundreds of millions people.

Lenin possessed (like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Saddamn) the same ruthless, myopic, self-centered outlook as a child as he did as an adult. In other words, he never matured. Only the violence increased as he grew older. Indeed, one is still stunned that millions can be casually ordered to die due to economic status or political views. The author follows Lenin's activities both chronologically and philosophically as he meets, adopts then implements (through force, of course) his version of "Heaven on Earth" (what the Socialists used to call Socialism).

Lenin's brand of class hatred, his campaign against whole groups of people is not surprising in a country where individual rights had never found root. What was expected was the annihilation of whole groups due to their status as "enemy of the state". The first modern totalitarian state was the result and the human costs have been mind-boggling. Vladimir Bukovsky estimates that 50 million have been murdered (starved, tortured, sent to Siberia, shot outright etc) since 1917. Stalin simply raised Lenin's policies to a new level.

Despite its attempts to paint Lenin in a somewhat rosy light (a difficult task), this is still an informative book.

Rating:
Summary: Lenin the man - superb; Lenin the Russian - needs work.
Review: This biography is incredibly thorough, and is entirely fixated on Lenin. In fact, that would be my one complaint. The book was so thoroughly focused on Lenin (and I can appreciate how silly this must sound as the book was a biography of Lenin), that it missed properly characterizing what was going on in Russia. In certain sections the book did discuss what was taking place in Russia, but usually only within the very limited scope of how Lenin was responding to the problem. I felt the narrative on Lenin would have benefited from an expanded discussion of what was going on socially within Russia as Lenin came to power. This weakness of the book is perhaps exacerbated by the fact (something I did not know) that Lenin lived for 18 years outside of Russia as an adult man. As his ideology was developing he was fully outside of Russian culture.

Lenin was an average ideologue, but he was an above-average politician. His works on political philosophy, as Service says, were barely above the standard of a college student. They were not insightful and were not worthy of prominent distinction. Lenin was a consummate politician who did believe in the essential goals of socialism.

I believe he would have been disgusted at what Stalin did with the gulag system; however, Lenin was a pragmatist. He did not allow Stalin to rise to power on accident. Did he see Stalin as a balance against Trotski who Lenin may have feared would be more willing to compromise? The life of Lenin illustrates the core problem of socialism: it has never been embraced by people who did not prove to be brutally totalitarian and completely unwilling to allow individuality.

Rating:
Summary: Lenin the man - superb; Lenin the Russian - needs work.
Review: This biography is incredibly thorough, and is entirely fixated on Lenin. In fact, that would be my one complaint. The book was so thoroughly focused on Lenin (and I can appreciate how silly this must sound as the book was a biography of Lenin), that it missed properly characterizing what was going on in Russia. In certain sections the book did discuss what was taking place in Russia, but usually only within the very limited scope of how Lenin was responding to the problem. I felt the narrative on Lenin would have benefited from an expanded discussion of what was going on socially within Russia as Lenin came to power. This weakness of the book is perhaps exacerbated by the fact (something I did not know) that Lenin lived for 18 years outside of Russia as an adult man. As his ideology was developing he was fully outside of Russian culture.

Lenin was an average ideologue, but he was an above-average politician. His works on political philosophy, as Service says, were barely above the standard of a college student. They were not insightful and were not worthy of prominent distinction. Lenin was a consummate politician who did believe in the essential goals of socialism.

I believe he would have been disgusted at what Stalin did with the gulag system; however, Lenin was a pragmatist. He did not allow Stalin to rise to power on accident. Did he see Stalin as a balance against Trotski who Lenin may have feared would be more willing to compromise? The life of Lenin illustrates the core problem of socialism: it has never been embraced by people who did not prove to be brutally totalitarian and completely unwilling to allow individuality.

Rating:
Summary: Great writer, great book
Review: This book reads like a good novel as the author is a decent storyteller. He also has a decent sense of humour as well. The story is a fascinating one of fascinating times and of a really ruthless man who led it all: Lenin.

Some people have said that it was solely political; there is no doubt that you will walk away from this book knowing more about the kind of theoretical aspects of Marxism that were prevalent in his times that he was involved in, however, I think that the author does his best to portray him as a man as well.

Rating:
Summary: Well written and informative
Review: This is a well presented account. It reads very well, I finished this rather long book pretty fast. It goes over all the aspects of Lenin's life, as well as putting them in a good historical context. This is a good book to have, and a good read for anyone interested in Lenin, or Russian history. Some readers might be left wishing more a little more substance, but for the length of the book and the readability of it, it is a great account.