How does an ordinary young man from the Russian provinces become the revolutionary who would remake the twentieth century? In Vladimir Lenin: How to Become a Leader, the historian Vladlen Loginov sets aside a century of myth-making to study the one thing most biographies skip: the formation of the man before the legend.
Drawing on new sources, unpublished documents, and the memoirs of Russians in exile, Loginov follows the young Vladimir Ulyanov through his family, his schooling, his first political awakening, and the discipline that would become his signature. The result is less a monument than a portrait: the willpower, the persuasive gift, and the sheer capacity for work that were present in his character long before history gave them a stage.
One of the foremost authorities on Lenin, Loginov writes with the confidence of a scholar who knows his subject to the core, yet wears his learning lightly. This edition is translated from the Russian by Lewis White and carries an introduction by Professor Geoffrey Swain, setting the portrait within the wider field of Lenin studies for the English-speaking reader.
Author
Vladlen Loginov
Vladlen Loginov is one of Russia’s most prominent historians and screenwriters and is chiefly known for his work on Lenin.
Having graduated from the V. P. Potemkin Moscow Municipal Pedagogical Institute in 1950, Loginov served in the army before beginning work as a research associate in the Central Party Archive, where he remained for 30 years. Later, he took a job in the Party’s Department of the History of Marxism-Leninism. From the early 1980s, Loginov worked as a professor at the Party’s Institute of Social Studies.
Today, Vladlen Loginov is the director of the Centre for Historical Research, Professor of National and World History at the Russian Academy of Education, and author of over 400 academic works on the 20th century history of Russia.
His book Lenin: How to Become a Leader reveals the factors that formed the personality of the revolutionary leader.
Endorsements and Review Quotes
“[T]th lesson of this fluent, readable translation of Loginov’s 2005 Russian-language biography of the young Vladimir Ulyanov is that the making of Lenin was all about the context. […] Yet this is no iconoclastic study, but instead a sympathetic, sensitive and deeply knowledgeable account […]. Despite his modest aims, Loginov’s research certainly aids explanation of the making of Lenin.” Lara Douds, Slavic Review
“It is an admiring account of the coming of age of an intelligent and disciplined striver who had deliberately thrown away the chance at a promising career and who, surprisingly, in the last half of his life upended the entire world.” Robert Mayer, The Russian Review
“Reading oft‐used sources against the grain, Loginov attempts to clear away the accumulated layers of misunderstanding that have built up around Lenin following a century of ‘over‐politicisation of his image’ by admirers and detractors alike”. Robert H. Greene, Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society (JSPPS)
“I thoroughly enjoyed reading this new book, in its excellent and highly readable translation by Lewis White.” Bill Bowring, SCRSS Digest
“So how do you become a leader? Talent, singlemindedness, determination and hard work emerge here. Many would add ‘luck’ or even ‘the support of devoted women’. Loginov’s account is inclined to suggest an almost pre-ordained progress to power. Be that as it may, this is a sympathetic and meticulous contribution to the vast field of Lenin studies.” Kate Pursglove, East–West Review
