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| Glorious Future? That way... |
Lenin is the third in Volkoganov’s trio of biographies of early leaders of the Soviet Union Stalin, Trotsky and finally Lenin. What makes Volkoganov’s work notable is primarily the extraordinary access the author had to the archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Volkoganov was a military historian who taught at the Lenin Military Academy and eventually rose to serve as the chief assistant to Russia's first post Soviet leader, Boris Yeltsin. Among Volkoganov’s responsibilities for Yeltsin was the supervision of the declassification of the CPSU archives. Volkoganov had first crack at what few historians had ever seen – Lenins’ original documents.
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| A Young Lenin - with Hair! |
Volkoganov uses that access to craft a portrait of the unquestioned leader of Russia’s October Revolution. There is considerable controversy surrounding his portrait and the man who paints it. Volkoganov, despite his long tenure as part of the Soviet system, is a well-known critic of that system. This book addresses directly one of the central questions of Soviet history - is Stalinism a logical consequence of Leninism, or terrible aberration?
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| Lenin Today |
Volkoganov comes down squarely on the side of logical consequence. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union saw the creation of a system of pervasive violence and terror. Volkoganov uses the archives to document Lenin’s own use of terror for the promotion of his seizure of power. Volkoganov presents the case Lenin knew that there was no way to accomplish the total control he aspired to, without the excuse of crisis. Volkoganov argues that the Civil War was unnecessary except as the excuse for the violence needed to shock Russian society into cowering obedience. That, was always Lenin’s goal, and naturally became Stalin’s. The Apple did not fall far from the tree…
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