The Life and Death of Lenin

Who was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin?

He was a man with vast potential for good and evil.

He was one of the twentieth century’s political geniuses.

He was the revolutionary leader who envisioned backward, feudal Russia as the world’s first socialist country.

He bent Karl Marx’s theories into a weapon for conquering state power, and built the Bolshevik Party into an efficient political machine capable of leading the workers and seizing power.

He held the Russian Revolution together through a bloody civil war, and yet he lived to see the betrayal of his ideals by the rise of Stalin.

As much as any leader, his ideas and personality shaped the 20th century.

‘Mr Payne’s book on Lenin is an impressive work and as interesting as it is impressive’ - Bertrand Russell

‘Splendid character study of a human dynamo’ - The Scotsman

‘a powerful delineation of the man and revolutionary leader … Mr. Payne highlight with a sure touch the main line of Lenin’s drive to power, selecting the significant details of speech, gesture and daily life that bring the man and his intimates to life. The Life and Death of Lenin will clarify both the political and human realities of the Soviet revolution and of communism’ - Philip E. Mosely, Saturday Review

‘to this large-scale study [Mr. Payne] has given his full measure of devotion … [with his] ability to pace a vast, detailed narrative; political sense; an unforced feeling for drama; a firm conception of the central character; and control over an English style that always both fluent and sharply edged … Not only do we watch the unlocking of the vaults of [Lenin’s] character, but we are also enabled to follow the development of the single revolutionary idea that dominated him.’ - Clifton Fadiman, Book-of-the-Month-Club News

‘All the talents of Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Addams couldn’t produce a more chilling tale’ - Associated Press

Robert Payne (1911-1983) had over a hundred books published on a wide range of subjects during his lifetime. Critics raved about ‘his vast erudition,’ ‘his magic power over words,’ and that rare ability ‘to capture the spiritual essence of his subject.’ The Russian series, in particular ‘The Life and Death of Lenin’ and ‘The Rise and Fall of Stalin’, raised his reputation as biographer to enormous stature.

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