Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Lenin: The Man, The Dictator, And The Master Of Terror


Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Victor Sebestyen's Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror for the Washington Times.

Let not October pass by without proper notice of the 100th anniversary of one of the greater calamities of modern history: the seizure of control of Russia on Oct. 25, 1917, by what became the Communist Party.

As biographer Victor Sebestyen writes in his horrifying biography of Vladimir Lenin, under communism “millions of people were killed, jailed or sent into the great maw of the gulag.” The estimated body count, in Russia and the rest of the world, is in multi-digit territory.

Should we fret about communism now that the Soviet Union and its subsidiaries are defunct? Think again. Recent public opinions show that some 80 percent of Russians look with favor upon Joseph Stalin, Lenin’s successor as dictator. President Vladimir Putin recently spent millions restoring Lenin’s tomb in Moscow — an artifice that Mr. Sebestyen labels as “part shrine, part tourist trap.” Mr. Putin’s goal of “restoring Russia’s rightful grandeur” is frequently stated.

The Hungarian-born Mr. Sebestyen, a foreign correspondent for several London dailies, including the Times, the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard, traces Lenin’s origins as a member of the comfortable minor nobility. Born Vladimir Ulyanov, he was radicalized when an older brother was hanged for working against Czar Nicholas II.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

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