Lenin: A Political Life: Volume 3: The Iron Ring

Lenin: A Political Life #3

by Robert Service

THIRD THE IRON RING. This is the third and final volume of a political biography by a well-respected scholar of Russian history. As in the earlier volumes, Vol. 1: The Strengths of Contradiction (LJ 7/85) and Vol. 2: Worlds in Collision (LJ 5/15/91), the study is of Lenin the individual, not his times; however, Lenin's relationships with Stalin and Trotsky are subject to special treatment. For this latter period from 1918 to Lenin's death in 1924, the author treats the assassination attempt upon the leader's life, peace with the Axis powers, the Civil War, the rise of Comintern, and the development of the New Economic Policy, as documented in both primary and secondary sources, including recently opened Soviet archival materials. Service portrays Lenin as a self-confident visionary and state terrorist committed to the centralization of power whose actions prepared the way for Stalinism. This is a significant and well-written study with a place in both general and scholarly collections.

Genres: Biography

420 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

This author is the British historian of modern Russia. For the British-Canadian writer of Yukon poetry, see Robert W. Service.

Robert Service is a British academic and historian of modern Russia and the Soviet Union. He is a professor of Russian history at the University of Oxford and a Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford.

He is the author of the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, A History of Twentieth - Century Russia, Russia: Experiment with a People and Stalin: A Biography, as well as many other books on Russia's past and present. He wrote a marvelous book on communism titled Comrades Communism A World History (International Bestseller). He is married with four children.