Customer Reviews

The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia

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Anyone interested in a good biography of Lenin written from a non-Communist slant should pick this up. Its amazing that this book, written in the '60s, required no revisions upon being re-published in 1998.

This book is a critical look at the life and career of V.I. Lenin. It is not entirely one-sided, however, and the author generally does a good job of putting events in their proper perspective. Those considering buying the more well-known Lenin biography written by Dimitri Volkogonov would do well to read this instead. It is far superior in every respect.

I read this book for a class to get an understanding of Lenin's influence on the Russian Revolution. This book is very detailed and not for someone who doesn't understand what the Bolsheviks were rebelling against. Little background is given on the Tsar's reign and the problems associated with autocratic rule. The story is never presented from the Tsar's side. What the reader does receive is a detailed account of Lenin's private and political life. Lenin was full of contradictions and paradoxes that were reflected in Communism. It was almost as though his influence was so powerful that the political culture reflected his egnimatic personality. In addition to being a fine intellectual biography of the man, Ulam's text details all the political movements that competed with Lenin in addition to highlighting the beginnings of the Stalin era.

Ulam writes well and is interesting to read. As a lay reader I found all the details sometimes overwhelming, and I had to do additional research to understand the issues that the Bolsheviks were responding to. As a non-scholar, I found this book readable and memorable.

There are many more recent books on this subject but rereading this one was interesting for the way it properly places the beginning of the subject in the nineteenth century beginning with the mutiny of the Decembrists in the 1820's. The history of Russian Communism told in a void is misleading in some ways. The whole tragedy begins with the extreme reaction of the Russian system (before and)after the repression of the Decembrists and the poisoning of the faintest indications of emerging liberal culture. This forced the issue from the beginning and virtually manufactured the extreme explosion that finally came. All this also puts the Bolshevik era in direct descent from the era of the French Revolution and the period of the Restoration in the era of the abortive birth of the bourgeois culture. All of a piece. The rest follows.

Very readable, fun, interesting history. It has a lot of good background, a lot of detail on political history of the Social Democrat party. Very insightful. If your interest is in the party as it led up to revolution, this is a great book to start with and the footnotes will help you find others to follow up with. It is 500 pages of the background of the party leaders, Lenin as central of course but with insight into the early party workings; it is not a private personal book about Lenin or a history of the Bolsheviks once in power, but for pre-power Bolshevism, its a great start.

Amazon's page says this is from 1998. That was just a reprint. The original is from 1965.

And it's mistitled. It's not so much a history of the movement so much as it is a biography of Lenin, but on that score it is superb.