LENIN. By Dmitri Volkogonov. Free Press; 529 pages; $30. HarperCollins; Pounds 25
OF ALL the figures who have influenced the course of the 20th century few are as opaque, in personality and belief, as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, or Lenin. Dmitri Volkogonov, a professed former believer in the infallibility of Lenin and Stalin turned critical biographer, has got it right when he says that Lenin combined naive historical optimism with vicious pessimism about his fellow men, a ferocious ...
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