Lenin

"Few men had a larger impact on the 20th century than Lenin, yet in all of my formal education he received no more than a passing mention. The accessible and balanced "Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror" started to fill in this egregious blank space in my mental map. Lenin's philosophy can be summed up as "the ends justify the means" and Sebestyen's excellent biography forces us to confront the terrible consequences of this idea. As architect of the Russian Revolution, Lenin is responsible for human suffering on a scale unmatched by almost anyone else in history. Yet for him, it was largely theoretical - he only saw three dead bodies in his whole life. Sebestyen's heavily researched book lends depth to this complex and tragic man who "desired the good... but created evil."<br/><br/>Lenin's personal life surprised me. I would never have guessed that his favorite book growing up was "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or that he loved reenacting the American Civil War (always taking the side of the Union!) with toy soldiers. He was an avid reader and chess player. His domestic life was irregular, to say the least. He was part of a ménage à trois, and his lover (Inessa Armand) exercised a major influence on him.<br/><br/>As he grew up, he became a complete workaholic (17+ hours a day) and prolific writer (over 10 million words in his lifetime). His capacity for intellectual effort and organizational management was astounding - in line with that of Alexander Hamilton, Robert Moses, and John D. Rockefeller. Given the chaos of the time, it's remarkable that he ran as tight of a ship as he did. It probably didn't hurt that his HR strategy was to threaten to "line up and shoot" underperformers.<br/><br/>Sebastyen expertly guided me through the bewilderingly complicated cast of characters in the chaos of the Russian Revolution. I was surprised by how much of a shitshow it was. Half the reason the revolution succeeded was because "most of the people didn’t care which side won." The murder of the Russian royal family was particularly brutal and sloppy. Yet the intrigue and violence surrounding the revolution snared the whole world in its web. The whole German "sealed train" scheme continues to give rise to conspiracy theories and the British gave over 100 million pounds (in 1917 dollars!) of aid to the anti-Bolshevik Whites. And in a wild twist, the leader of the Whites, Alexander Kerensky, ended his life as a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution!<br/><br/>What will stick with me most from this book are Lenin's failures. Tactically, he made the classic dictatorial blunder of muddled succession planning. But more importantly, his strategy of "the ends justify the means" imposed terrible suffering upon the Russian people. In many ways, this core guiding principle is the opposite of Western law in which we consider a man innocent until proven guilty. In Lenin's world, it was "better that 100 innocent people are killed than that one person who is a danger to the Revolution remains free and a potential threat." Sebestyen's biography won't let us look away from the results of this philosophy.<br/><br/>I want to end this review with a Lenin quote that sounds eerily modern - I wouldn't be surprised at all to read this in a Facebook post today. Let us not forget the past.<blockquote>Our morality is new, our humanity is absolute, for it rests on the ideal of destroying all oppression and coercion. To us, all is permitted, for we are the first in the world to raise the sword not in the name of enslaving or oppressing anyone, but in the name of freeing all from bondage... Blood? Let there be blood, if it alone can turn the grey-white-and-black banner of the old piratical world to a scarlet hue, for only the complete and final death of that old world will save us from the return of the old jackals.’</blockquote><br/>Full review and highlights at <a href="https://books.max-nova.com/lenin">https://books.max-nova.com/lenin</a>"

"Yes! Open veins of latin America "