The Life and Death of Lenin – by Robert Payne
I’ve mentioned in some of my past book reviews that I think
the standard of biography writing may have changed somewhat over the years. This
book was written in 1964, and I’m not entirely sure a major publisher would
have released this thing today without insisting that some changes and edits be
implemented.
First, this is a very good book if you want to really learn
about Lenin the man. This book goes into intricate detail of all of the man’s
activities and feelings.
About half of
this book covers the time frame before the first Russian Revolution that
occurred in 1905. It’s quite the accomplishment for an author to have
researched the comings and goings of his subject so thoroughly. We get many glimpses into the curious life of
a rather well-off young man that seemed to have much more in common with the bourgeoisie than the proletariat. It’s never really uncovered why Lenin became
such a mouthpiece for a cause that didn’t seem too close to him as he was growing
up. Of course, his older brother was a radical revolutionary as a young man and
his activities eventually led to his execution. This might have had some
motivation for young Lenin, but we then must peel back the onion further and
ask why his brother displayed such characteristics. These curious behaviors of
Lenin and his older brother are never quite made clear.
We still get a feel for the man, and he’s not in the
slightest bit likable. He is very gruff and nasty by nature and seems solely
focused on bringing the bourgeoisie down by revolution. He seems to have no
other interests at all. His marriage even seems to be one of convenience as
opposed to him and his wife having any romantic feelings for each other.
Throughout Lenin’s youth, we see him being exiled in Siberia and abroad, and
his main focus always seems to be whether or not his new home has any sort of
substantial library. All Lenin wants to do is study, read, and write about revolution.
As much detail that the author provides about his subject, I
would have liked him to devote more of the pages in this book to the events
going on around Russia that Lenin found himself engulfed in at the time. The
author seems to think his reader doesn’t need any sort of primer, but I’m not
entirely sure that’s a good assumption. Example: When the 1917 revolution ‘succeeds’,
there is very little detail discussed about the Russian Civil war that would go
on for the next 5 years or so. I felt
that a brief chapter or two summarizing this time period would be a good addition
for a book such as this.
Probably the thing that bothered me the most about this
author is that he’s not content with simply making a reference to another piece
of work when writing. He feels obligated to actually quote these sources
word-for-word, and this book is filled with unnecessary detailed pages and
passages from other sources that sometimes last several pages in length. He
simply doesn’t care to summarize his findings. This is an area where a modern
writer (or publisher, especially) would realize that such detail is unnecessary,
and this brings down the whole experience for the reader. I mean, what’s the point of including a
bibliography if you’re going to quote verbatim every single source that you
uncover?
Then we come to the death of Lenin. Of course, the title of
this book is The Life AND Death of Lenin, but, geez, I think we read 5 or 6
chapters on the last days of Lenin. He suffers multiple strokes and his
confided to bed, yet we read on and on and on and on and on about his daily
life during his prolonged illness. It’s incredibly tedious. We don’t really
need to read about every day of his life as an invalid. Especially since, as I
stated before, many of the historical events were glossed over. He even implies
that Lenin was murdered by Stalin – an accusation that I’ve never heard
anywhere before. His reasons for such a
catastrophe are rather speculative and shaky. Again, though, this is an old
book.
A good study of the man, but I would recommend a period piece
that focused more on the events of the time (A People’s Tragedy by Orlando
Figes is an excellent source) to compliment your reading here. You learn a lot about the individual, but not
enough about the events that shaped his behavior.
