Lenin's Rise & Fall

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Vladimir Lenin is one name that is known across the world. Rising to power during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, he was the first Communist dictator in history and the architect of the Red Terror - a deadly campaign of political oppression and execution carried out in the earliest years of Soviet Russia. But contrary to his self-avowed image as champion of the proletariat, Lenin was actually raised in an upper-middle-class family of Russian monarchists, with little to mark him out as a future revolutionary.

In this episode James is joined by Victor Sebestyen, a renowned historian of Communism and Russian History. Together they examine the life of Lenin, from his privileged upbringing to his exile in the UK & Europe, and finally to his triumphant return to the motherland during the October Revolution that heralded a the Soviet Era. Looking at the events that shaped Lenin's political mind, it raises the question - was Lenin always destined to usher in a new age of Russian history?

Victor's book is available here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Vladimir Lenin has gone down in history as the world's first communist leader, a man set on a violent revolution and the architect of the red terror, a wave of violent suppression responsible for the murder of thousands.
0:16.2	But Lenin wasn't born a revolutionary.
0:18.6	In fact, he was born to a rather well-to-do Russian family.
0:22.0	So how did Lenin become so important? How did he rise to power?
0:27.0	Well, I'm your host James Rogers and to help us find out I'm happy to welcome the award-winning
0:31.6	author and historian Victor Sebastian onto the podcast.
0:35.6	Victor is the author of Lenin, the man, the dictator, and the master of terror.
0:40.7	And it's from Victor's incredible research in the Russian archives that we hear about
0:44.9	the many sides of Vladimir Lenin and a little about how his legacy impacts Russia today.
0:51.1	Hi Victor. Russia today.
0:57.0	Hi Victor, welcome to Warfare. How are you doing today? I'm good.
0:58.0	Thanks very much for asking me, looking forward to this conversation.
1:01.0	Yeah, well, thanks so much for coming on to the podcast today we're
1:05.2	focusing in on the life and death of Vladimir Lenin the man who led the first
1:10.0	communist revolution in history overthrowing a czar and ending a dynasty.
1:15.8	But take us back, if you will, to the 1800s and tell us about a young Lenin.
1:22.2	He had a passion for hunting, for fishing, for chess, and I believe the English
1:27.7	classics. He was of noble birth, not an obvious person who might think to be the proletarian workers revolution.
1:37.0	He got noble status through the civil service rank of his father, who was school's inspector of a huge province in Russia.
1:46.4	So education was a very strong part of him.
1:48.7	He was an upper-class gentleman and brought out like that.
1:51.7	Nothing in his background would have marked him out as one of the history's greatest rebels.
	...

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