Lenin : a biography / Robert Service

Includes bibliographical references and index

The rebel emerges. The Ulyanoys and the blanks ; Childhood in simbirsk : 1870-1885 ; Deaths in the family : 1886-1887 ; The ploughing of the mind : 1887-1888 ; Paths to revolution : 1889-1893 ; St. Petersurg : 1893-1895 ; To Siberian Italy : 1895-1900 -- Lenin and the party. An organisation of revolutionaries : 1900-1902 ; "Holy fire" : 1902-1904 ; Russia from far and near : 1905-1907 ; The second emigration : 1908-1911 ; Almost Russia! : 1912-1914 ; Fighting for defeat : 1914-1915 ; Lasting out : 1915-1916 -- Seizing power. Another country : February to April 1917 ; The Russian cockpit : May to July 1917 ; Power for the taking : July to October 1917 ; The October revolution : October to December 1917 ; Dictatorship under siege : Winter 1917-1918 ; Brest-Litovsk : January to May 1918 ; At gunpoint : May to August 1918 -- Defence of the revolution. War leader : 1918-1919 ; Expanding the revolution : April 1919 to April 1920 ; Defeat in the west : 1920 ; The new economic policy : January to June 1921 ; A question of survival : July 1921 to July 1922 ; Disputing to the last : September to December 1922 ; Death in the big house : 1923-1924 -- Lenin : the afterlife

"Lenin's politics continue to reverberate around the world even after the end of the USSR. His name elicits revulsion and reverence, yet Lenin the man remains largely a mystery. This biography shows us Lenin as we have never seen him, in his full complexity as revolutionary, political leader, thinker, and private person. Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870, the son of a schools inspector and a doctor's daughter, Lenin was to become the greatest single force in the Soviet revolution--and perhaps the most influential politician of the twentieth century. Drawing on sources only recently discovered, Robert Service explores the social, cultural, and political catalysts for Lenin's explosion into global prominence. His book gives us the vast panorama of Russia in that awesome vortex of change from tsarism's collapse to the establishment of the communist one-party state. Through the prism of Lenin's career, Service focuses on dictatorship, the Marxist revolutionary dream, civil war, and interwar European politics. And we are shown how Lenin, despite the hardships he inflicted, was widely mourned upon his death in 1924"--Publisher's description