Robert Service - A Biography of Lenin

2. CHILDHOOD IN SIMBIRSK
18701885

3. DEATHS IN THE FAMILY
18861887

4. THE PLOUGHING OF THE MIND
18871888

5. PATHS TO REVOLUTION
18891893

6. ST PETERSBURG
18931895

7. TO SIBERIAN ITALY
18951900

8. AN ORGANISATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES
19001902

9. HOLY FIRE
19021904

10. RUSSIA FROM FAR AND NEAR
19051907

11. THE SECOND EMIGRATION
19081911

12. ALMOST RUSSIA!
19121914

13. FIGHTING FOR DEFEAT
19141915

14. LASTING OUT
19151916

15. ANOTHER COUNTRY
February to April 1917

16. THE RUSSIAN COCKPIT
May to July 1917

17. POWER FOR THE TAKING
July to October 1917

18. THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
October to December 1917

19. DICTATORSHIP UNDER SIEGE
Winter 19171918

20. BREST-LITOVSK
January to May 1918

21. AT GUNPOINT
May to August 1918

22. WAR LEADER
19181919

23. EXPANDING THE REVOLUTION
April 1919 to April 1920

24. DEFEAT IN THE WEST
1920

25. THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY
January to June 1921

26. A QUESTION OF SURVIVAL
July 1921 to July 1922

27. DISPUTING TO THE LAST
September to December 1922

28. DEATH IN THE BIG HOUSE
19231924

This book was read in draft by Adele Biagi, David Godwin, Heather Godwin, Martyn Rady, Arfon Rees and Tanya Stobbs, and John Klier read the first chapter. Their suggestions made for very welcome improvements. Several helpful tips were also offered by Philip Cavendish, Myszka Davies, Norman Davies, Bill Fishman, Julian Graffy, Riitta Heino, John Klier, Richard Ramage, Arfon Rees, Kay Schiller and Faith Wigzell. I should also like to thank John Screen and Lesley Pitman in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies Library in London and Jackie Willcox in the St Antonys Russian Centre Library in Oxford for their assistance in getting important material on to the stacks. David King generously introduced me to the wonders of his personal collection of Soviet photographs and posters, and I am immensely grateful for his permission to use some here. A particular debt is also owed to the staff of the Russian Centre for the Conservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History, especially Kirill Anderson, Larisa Rogovaya, Yelena Kirillova, Irina Seleznva and Larisa Malashenko; and to Vladimir Kozlov at the State Archive of the Russian Federation. Russian fellow historians who have given me useful ideas for research include Gennadi Bordyugov, Vladimir Buldakov, Oleg Khlevniuk, Vladimir Kozlov and Andrei Sakharov.

Lenin is a subject of great political and emotional resonance in Russia and I am grateful for the encouragement given by Russian friends to undertake this biography. I am aware that as a foreigner I may be walking into sensitive areas, perhaps even with hobnailed boots. Then again this is perhaps what the biography of Lenin requires.

For several years on my way to work in central London I used to cycle past buildings where Lenin lived, edited or researched. One route took me through Highbury (where Iskra editors had their Russian mail sent) and on to the St Pancras district (where Lenin lived in 1900), across Grays Inn Road (with its pubs where Lenin drank with party comrades in 1905) and along Tavistock Place (where he lived for some months in 1908). It strengthened a feeling that my subject was not quite as exotic as it sometimes appeared. But of course it is in Russia that fuller perspective on his life and times must be obtained. The Kremlin, Red Square and the Smolny Institute are buildings that have to be visited in order to acquire a sense of time and place. I have tried in the following chapters also to give a sense of personality. In this connection it was a pleasure to meet and spend an afternoon with Viktoria Nikolaevna Ulyanova, one of the few people alive who knew the Ulyanov family members mentioned in the book. Her generosity of spirit a trait not shared by Lenin, her husbands uncle demonstrates that not everything that happened in Russia earlier this century was absolutely inevitable.