Lenin The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror

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 is 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 what  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. (With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs)