Lenin and the Making of the Soviet State: A Brief History with Documents

by Jeffrey Brooks

Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870 - 1924) led the first successful revolt against market-based liberal democracy and founded the Soviet State in 1917, serving as the new nation s chief architect and sole ruler for the next five years. This collection of primary sources allows readers to learn about Lenin through his own words and emphasizes Lenin s actions rather than his ideology. Jeffrey Brooks and Georgiy Chernyavskiy have translated newly available documents that make it possible to provide a more accurate portrait of a ruthless political strategist whose actions created a new political, economic, social, and cultural system that in its heyday challenged the military, technological, and cultural might of the United States. Document headnotes, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography offer additional pedagogical support and encourage students to analyze the actions and beliefs of a man who transformed world history and whose legacy continues to affect social and political movements throughout the world.

Genres: History, Russia, Politics, Nonfiction

209 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 25, 2006

Reviews

[Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

How anyone has a strong positive opinion on lLenin astounds me. I believe I fall into a camp of admiration but not agreement with him. He clearly did not understand the structure of country which he sought to revolutionize. I'm still a little bit split on state capitalism and the NEP- there could have been some true marxist intentions there. It is quite unfortunate Lenin suffered strokes when he did. Perhaps the soviet union would have developed much differently. More than anything is how inpressive his revolutionary power was. I think simply if actual workers were allowed to participate in government I would be able to overlook his flaws more generally.

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for college students

[Jeffrey]

This is where it all began and was kept afoot until Gorbachev came along with his do-nothing demotion (and eventual demolition) of East Germany's GDR culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Lenin was the devil. Like Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini his focus was absolute power for one and one person only: the dictator. If you opposed this arbitrary thinking, you were jailed, tortured, or executed--or any combination thereof.

What's interesting is that even though communism and its socialist counterpart is on the outs, its effects still reverberate around the world still intimately touching half of those alive today. Touching today's people politically, if still under communist regime, but also philosophically and in memory if not.

Understanding what Lenin was about and what his idealism focused on is critical, for he is the founding father of the Soviet State. He was the father of lies, who promised great things for the proletariat until he had them in the grasp of his power, changing state policy on an arbitrary whim to meet his purpose and his purpose only.

If you don't believe in the devil, here he is alive and well and continuing to prosper in such countries as North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. Nothing is more important than eradicating this type of failed, selfish, evil thinking. Read and ponder what's to be done, for this demon seed needs to be crushed absolutely and completely. And it all begins with your understanding of all its inherent evils. Amen.

[Ashley Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book, but not that well written.