Neil Harding’s upends traditional, Cold War-centric interpretations of Lenin’s thought, showing how the trajectory of his theoretical, strategic, and tactical insights were informed by the process of revolutionary revolt in Russia and globally.

Caricatured as a superhuman idol in the former Communist states, the Russian revolutionary socialist V. I. Lenin has long been reversely caricatured in the West as an authoritarian elitist. In this brilliant, carefully researched analysis, Neil Harding upends these traditional Cold War interpretations of Lenin’s thought and activity. Harding shows how Lenin’s flexible and continuously changing theoretical, strategic, and tactical insights were firmly grounded in the emancipatory potential for working-class revolution in Russia and globally.

PRAISE:

“[Harding] has rehabilitated Lenin as a serious and consistent Marxist thinker who based his actions not on mere expedience but on a thoroughgoing consideration of the social and economic limitations of his time.”

Ronald Grigor Suny, Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan