A fearless fighter, an enemy of superstition, religion and all that is petty-bourgeois? Or maybe a coward, philistine and manipulator who piously makes the sign of the cross upon the news of victory? To this day, this legendary twentieth-century leader is still surrounded by many secrets. What was he really like and how did he lead the empire?
Lenin escapes the patterns to which all later dictators were subject. He did not act solely through terror. In many ways, he was a political phenomenon, a demagogue, spreading empty promises, lies, and professing the simple principle that the end justifies the means.
He was not a sadist, madman, or even a fanatic. He put tactics over doctrinal purity, and was able to change his mind drastically when it was profitable to do so. In personal contacts a polite upper-middle-class gentleman, never wore uniforms or asked for details of the victims' deaths which for him only had a numerical dimension.
He created a system based on the idea that terror is justified by higher reasons, which was then perfected by Stalin. He wanted power and he wanted to change the world. He has achieved both. The Bolshevik coup of 1917 turned the world on its head, and a hundred years later Russia and many other countries are overwhelmingly influenced by communism.
We recommend Victor Sebestyen's book Lenin. The Dictator " , published by the Prószyński i S-ka publishing house.
Lenin's Biography by Victor Sebestyen it is not only an in-depth study of the dictatorship. It is also - or perhaps most of all - a deep, intimate portrait of the man responsible for the greatest horror of mankind.
Victor Sebestyen - British journalist of Hungarian origin. He worked, among others for the London Evening Standard, The Times, Daily Mail and Newsweek. As a foreign correspondent, he described the fall of communism and the war in Yugoslavia. He is the author of a book on the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the fall of the Soviet empire in 1989.
You must have this biography of the leader of the October revolution on your shelf:
