My Amazon Review of Victor Sebestyen's "Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror"

Paving the Way for Stalin

Victor Sebestyen has written a masterful biography of V.I. Lenin in which he covers both the personal and the political. On the personal side it is obvious Lenin, the son of an upper middle class family was no proletarian. His tastes and lifestyle strived to be middle class. Although he lived austerely he was very sensitive for the need for creature comforts. He enjoyed mountain walks and hunting. He also skillfully managed his very socialist ménage a trois with his wife Nadya Krupskaya and his 10 year mistress Inessa Armand.

However it is on the political side where Lenin becomes a man of history. He was strategically inflexible in pursuing a socialist dictatorship for Russia, and oh did he succeed. Nevertheless on the tactical side Lenin was extraordinarily flexible and was willing to be expedient to further his strategic goals. He could be for democracy and against democracy, he could hate the Germans and then become their ally, and when “war communism” failed he flipped and supported the proto-capitalist New Economic Program (NEP). All of this was in the service of his communist dictatorship.

Sebestyan clearly portrays how Lenin paved the way for Stalinism. It was Lenin who created the Cheka (forerunner to the KGB) with its terror cells for political opponents. It was Lenin who initiated the forced grain requisitions from the peasantry and made villains out of the better off by calling them Kulaks. Stalin would kill millions of them a decade later. It was Lenin who attacked deviations from the Left and the Right turning those into anti-party enemies. And it was Lenin who showed no mercy when he crushed the Kronstadt sailors rebellion. All of this was in place by 1924, the year he died. All Stalin had to do was to refine it and make a cult out of Lenin in whose name he ruled.

On two minor notes, I am glad that Sebestyen highlighted the role of the Russian feminist Alexandra Kollontai as one who was very close to Lenin and was in the room when the decision was made to overthrow the Kerensky government in October 1917. I did catch one error in that Sebestyen described Armand Hammer as an oil magnate when he entered into deals with the Soviet government under the NEP. True Hammer was an oil magnate, but that came much later. In Russia he sold pencils.

All told Sebestyen has told the story of a personality whose iron will made Soviet communism possible. For reader interested in learning more about this period in history I would suggest the Stephen Kotkin biographies of Stalin.

For the full Amazon Review see: https://www.amazon.com/review/RD5VLEG2EEQ64/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Sean McMeekin's "The Russian Revolution: A New History"

Russia Turns Red

Historian Sean McMeekin has written a very readable revisionist history of the Russian Revolution.  The perspective of the book is to look at the revolution from outside in. Hence we learn more about the opposition to Lenin rather than an inside out view which would focus more on the Bolshevik leadership. According to his archival sources McMeekin clearly portrays Lenin as a German agent who brought the financial resources of Hohenzollern Germany with him to overwhelm both his critics on the left and the forces of the provisional government.

In McMeekin’s view both the Tsar and the Russian army were in far better shape than what other historians have argued. I think he stretches here, because if it were that strong the army would not have collapsed as fast as it did under the weight of the Leninist policy of turning an imperialist war into a civil war by subverting the Russian draftees.

He argues, I think correctly, that Lenin was blessed by his opponents. The liberals who brought on the February/March Revolution were inept and the Socialist Revolutionary government under Kerensky was perhaps even more inept. When the time came for Lenin to strike in October/November, the provisional government was a mere shell.  Thus the revolution was more a coup d’état than a real revolution. The revolution would come with the bloody civil war that followed the coup.

During the civil war period McMeekin highlights how split the opposition was and how unified the newly formed Red Army was under the leadership of Trotsky. Trotsky wisely utilized the officer corps of the defeated Tsarist army to build his new army and utilizing Russian gold reserves, Lenin was able to keep the army in the field. Nevertheless millions of lives were lost in the three year civil war as the country nearly starved to death and was saved by Herbert Hoover’s relief mission. One last note McMeekin tells us that the Cheka, the predecessor to the KGB, was founded to break the strike of banking, railroad and communication workers, so much for proletarian solidarity.

Therefore I highly recommend the ”The Russian Revolution” for history buffs like myself. 

The full Amazon URL is: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2D7LMPHM3B2T1/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv