http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
the man, the dictator, and the master of terror
xix, 569 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm.
Victor Sebestyen's riveting biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the first major biography in English in nearly two decades, is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the twentieth century but also a fascinating portrait of Lenin the man. Brought up in comfort and with a passion for hunting and fishing, chess and the English classics, Lenin was radicalized after the execution of his brother in 1887. Sebestyen traces the story from Lenin's early years to his long exile in Europe and return to Petrograd in 1917 to lead the first Communist revolution in history. Uniquely, Sebestyen has discovered that throughout Lenin's life his closest relationships were with his mother, his sisters, his wife and his mistress. The long-suppressed story told here of the love triangle that Lenin had with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya and his beautiful, married mistress and comrade, Inessa Armand, reveals a more complicated character than that of the coldly one-dimensional leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. With Lenin's personal papers and those of other leading political figures now available, Sebestyen gives us new details that bring to life the dramatic and gripping story of how Lenin seized power in a coup and ran his revolutionary state. The product of a violent, tyrannical and corrupt Russia, he chillingly authorized the deaths of thousands of people and created a system based on the idea that political terror against opponents was justified for a greater ideal. An old comrade who had once admired him said that Lenin "desired the good, but created evil." This included his invention of Stalin, who would take Lenin's system of the gulag and the secret police to horrifying new heights. In Lenin, Victor Sebestyen has written a brilliant portrait of this dictator as a complex and ruthless figure, and he also brings to light important new revelations about the Russian Revolution, a pivotal point in modern history.
Prologue: The coup d'état -- A nest of gentlefolk -- A childhood idyll -- The hanged man -- The police state -- A revolutionary education -- Vladimir Ilyich--attorney at law -- Nadya--a Marxist courtship -- Language, truth and logic -- Foreign parts -- Prison and Siberia -- Lenin is born -- Underground lives -- England, their England -- What is to be done? -- The great schism--Bolsheviks and Mensheviks -- Peaks and troughs -- An autocracy without an autocrat -- Back home -- "Expropriate the expropriators" -- Geneva--"an awful hole" -- Inessa--Lenin in love -- Betrayals -- A love triangle--two into three will go -- Catastrophe--the world at war -- In the wilderness -- The last exile -- Revolution--part one -- The sealed train -- To the Finland station -- The interregnum -- "Peace, land and bread" -- The spoils of war -- A desperate gamble -- The July days -- On the run -- Revolution--part two -- Power--at last -- The man in charge -- The sword and shield -- War and peace -- The one-party state -- The battle for grain -- Regicide -- The assassins' bullets -- The simple life -- Reds and whites -- Funeral in Moscow -- The "Internationale" -- Rebels at sea and on land -- Intimations of mortality -- Revolution--again -- The last battle -- "An explosion of noise" -- Lenin lives.
Includes bibliographical references and index.