Socialism in Russia: Lenin and His Legacy, 1890-1991

This ground-breaking analysis confronts three fundamental questions about the socialist experiment in Russia: How did Marxist ideas come to be implemented in a country entirely unsuited to them? Why did the experiment lead to such suffering and upheaval and prove so fruitless? Why did the attempt to return to orthodox Marxism/Leninism bring about the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union?

John Gooding seeks answers in the legacy of Lenin. He investigates the two conflicting views on Lenin's character. On the one hand, Lenin was perceived-largely due to Stalin-as a godlike figure, embodying the omniscience and might of the Party. On the other, he was known-mainly among intellectuals and perestroika reformers-as a Marxist idealist, an anti-Stalinist and a democrat. It was this latter perception, Gooding argues, that brought the socialist experiment in Russia to its end.

Author Biography: John Gooding is Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of Rulers and Subjects: Government and People in Russia, 1801-1991.