Volume 2, Number 9 · June 11, 1964
Lives of Lenin
By George Lichtheim
The Life and Death of Lenin
by Robert Payne
Simon & Schuster, 672 pp., $8.50
Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary
by Stefan T. Possony
Henry Regnery, 418 pp., $7.95
Impressions of Lenin
by Angelica Balabanoff
University of Michigan, 176 pp., $5.00
The Life of Lenin
by Louis Fischer
Harper & Row, 724 pp., $10.00
1964 promises to be a vintage year for biographies of Lenin. It is, after all, exactly four decades since his death in 1924. It also happens to be the year of the formal dissolution of 'world Communism' into rival camps; but this unexpected event is in the nature of a bonus from the viewpoint of authors and publishers concerned with the personality of the man who started it all. As matters now stand, the proper procedure, for anyone with an urge to be up-to-date, is to begin with the image of the prophet—shrouded and embalmed in his gloomy mausoleum—and then work backward to 1917, and forward to the present year, when this new Islam dissolved into hostile empires centered around Moscow and Peking. In this way one obtains the correct historical perspective, and at the same time links the subject with immediate topical concerns, such as the relation of Russia to Asia. We are all getting expert at this kind of thing. Before long anyone equipped with a college degree and a typewriter may feel able to join the fray.
Review, 3453 words
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