Attempting to make the most interesting political figure of the twentieth century seem absolutely boring would be quite an obstacle for most people, especially when you have access to the Soviet Presidential Archive, but Dmitri Volkogonov has somehow achieved this task with flying colors. The historian Isaac Deutscher wrote a three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky in the 1950's, and his writings were far superior to this biography of Trotsky by Volkogonov, which was written within the past decade!

The playright Edvard Radzinsky had the same access to the Presidential Archive that Volkognov had, yet his biography of Stalin was one of the most informative books I have ever read. Perhaps Volkogonov attempted to take advantage of the newly established market economy in Russia by producing as many books as he could(at the expense of research and lucidity of writing), and after they attained a respectable amount of success, he walked away with all the money(of course he died in 1995, so I guess his family now is now taking the money). He tells the reader everything they could have found elsewhere(even on Microsoft Encarta!), such as Trotsky's birth in Yanavka in 1879, the Russian Social Democratic split in 1903, his first encounter with Lenin, his role as the founder of the Red Army, etcetera, and etcetera. This is all fine if you're not familiar with Trotsky life, but it's not fine if the author has access to as exclusive as documents as the Presidential archive. A prospective reader would have expected a book that claims to be a "breakthrough reinterpetration" of Trotsky to live up to it's name, but I found that it almost certainly didn't. Although [this] is a good price for a Hardback book with a dustjacket, I would still recommend that you just look at MSN Encarta's description of Trotsky, you learn all of the same stuff that Volkogonov somehow crammed into 488 pgs(maybe this is what he did to write the book, who knows?). Edvard Radzinsky has written books about Rasputin, Nicholas II, and Stalin, so there's always the possibility that he'll write a biography of Trotsky, and maybe even Lenin(tasks which would undo all of the damage that Volkogonov has done to the prestige of the Presidential Archive).

Volkogonov has written a very sensitive portrait of Trotsky. For specialists, of course, it should be combined with a reading of Deutscher's three-volume biography, but for general readers Volkogonov should suffice. Volkogonov's "Trotsky" is not as scholarly as Deutscher's masterly work, but it's more balanced. The author, a disillusioned former Communist, recognizes Trotsky's genius and portrays him in sympathetic and tragic terms, yet frequently reminds us that his subject was working under fatally flawed premises. Since he doesn't take communism seriously on an intellectual level, he spares us most of the details about theoretical clashes among the Bolsheviks over Marxist interpretations. He also reminds us that even though Trotsky never ceased criticizing Stalin's tyranny, his own role in the development of the murderous role of the CPSU was not innocent. Some readers may justly criticize Volkogonov's haphazard organization of his materials, but I find it doesn't detract from his work, and I rather enjoyed his more personal observations.

"The entire structure of Leninism is at present based on lies and falsification and carries within it the poisonous seeds of its own destruction."

Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, known as Trotsky, the one time Social Democrat, one time political opponent of Lenin, one time war correspondent, one time toast of radical society dilatants, one time People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, one time member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, and finally political fugitive and Stalinist purge victim wrote the above quote in 1913. Dmitri Volkogonov's book, Trotsky, provides a stimulating portrait of this fascinating personality and the various roles/political outlooks that he struggled through.

To start let's consider Volkoganov's view of the 2nd Party Congress held in London in the summer of 1903. Far from repeating the usual interpretation, he offers a new one, namely that instead of being simply a question of party organization which divided the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, it was "over a difference in the theory and practice of revolutionary methodology. The congress formalized the coexistence of two parallel tendencies: one radical, revolutionary and uncompromising, which would characterize the Bolsheviks; the other reformist, evolutionary and parliamentary, which was to become the hallmark of those henceforth known as Mensheviks" page 29. As the author mentions, it is also interesting to note that the original platform of the RSDLP advocated democracy, secret suffrage, inviolability of the person, freedom of thought, speech, press, movement, assembly, strikes and trade unions as well as other similar goals.

How did all these noble dreams of a great humanist state end up as a mass gulag? The answer in one word is Lenin. Lenin, the egotistical nihilist, rejected out of hand any "bourgeois theory", relying solely instead on his own interpretation of Marx and Engels. Any non-Bolshevik political opponent was subject to the worst sort of derogatory comments and personal attack. In March of 1917, Lenin arrived in revolutionary Petrograd unwilling to compromise with anyone and enjoying unlimited financial resources thanks to the German General Staff. Trotsky, who had since joined the Bolsheviks, supported Lenin's hard line unquestioningly. While the Provisional Government worried of an attack from the right, Lenin, ever the cynical opportunist, promised an end to the war and land to the peasants. Bolshevik agitators spread through the army to convince the troops to desert or simply ignore the orders of their officers. By October the stage was set, a radical party of limited support and scope was able to overthrow what remained of the Provisional Government with little effort or bloodshed, but by rejecting all compromise and by ruthlessly exercising complete power, Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks made the Russian Civil War a reality. After the October "Revolution" Trotsky became ever more important to Lenin, whose effectiveness as a speaker was limited. As Yaroslavsky described him at the time, Trotsky was "a man most profoundly dedicated to the revolution, a man who has grown up to be a tribune, with a tongue as finely honed and flexible as steel, a tongue that can cut his enemies down, and a pen which scatters a wealth of ideas like handfuls of artistic pearls." Page 82.

Perhaps the author's most important view is that the tragedy that became the Soviet Union required each of the Bolshevik triumvirate to play the part he was most suited for. Lenin was the ruthless opportunist, his unquestioning will to destroy and control by terror setting the tone and shape of the entire system. Stalin was the pathological paranoid master of conspiracy, the consolidator, basically a fascistic criminal, who had got his start in the Party as a bank robber. And Trotsky? He provided the siren's song for the masses, the pure light of his reason projected to attract a storm of adolescent and unquestioning human devotion and energy willing to follow whoever held the red flag. Is it any wonder that Trotsky didn't outlast the Civil War period by very long? After his expulsion, Trotsky provided the excuse for Stalin's tyranny, even supplying the ideological framework for the disasterous "Second October Revolution" of 1928-40. The Bolshevik system required all three and played itself out in a very mechanical, a very deterministic way, success meant retaining absolute power and in that one sense, the only goal with any meaning for Lenin, it was successful until 1991 when the machinary collapsed.

Why do unrepentant Leninists in the West continue with the charade that Bolshevism held any hope for mankind? Pride and egotism, along with a cynical and patronizing view of humanity blind them to the shambles all around them, block their noses from the smell of the grimacing, yet rancid Leninist corpse that they have strapped to their backs. That and the role they play as scarecrow/whipping boy for the reactionary and Reaganist right which automatically labels any opposition to the corporate-dominated national security state as "communism" gives them a false, yet ego-enhancing, sense of importance. In other words they'd love to stop acting like trick dogs, but they can't give up the attention they get.

This book and the author's biography on Lenin tell the whole sordid history. Time for the "left" to finally bury the Leninist corpse and decide on a counter-argument that exposes Reaganist "behind-closed-doors-government". What America especially needs is a new urge and will to protect our basic human rights and liberties, such as the original goals of our Founding Fathers or, for that matter, of the RSDLP. Nobody needs another utopian ideology, such as Leninism or some deluted, "people-friendly" version of Reaganism, but a pragmatic program that sees humanity, its natural physical environment and its artifical economic environment for what they are and responds accordingly.

Gen. Volkogonov is not a professional historian, and certainly not a great writer. His work his well researched and meticolous, but is fails to either capture the general reader or to impress the reader looking for a clear analysis of causes and consequences. The book is very long, the style of prose quite boring and at times repetitive. The author very often has a moralistic tone ("How could Stalin posssibly be so cruel? Look how corrupt his cronies were...") that bothers those who would like a more detached approach. I guess one has to remember that once he believed in Communism and cannot have helped being shocked by what he found in the state's archives (where he ventured with the original purpose of writing an orthodox biography of the Great Leader); this might explain his being upset at Stalin, but does not make the book more appealing. In the end, Gen. Volgokonov's main merit is exactly this: to have been able to access, thanks to his position in the Red Army, the USSR's impenetrable archives, and to have revealed to the world a deluge of details and documents. Some of them are immensely controversial in their potential consequences (eg the statements made by Stalin before the German attack that war was inevitable; or Zukov's plan for a preventive strike against Germany). Indeed, this book deservedly appears in most bibliographies on the USSR and the Russo-German war, and has provided the academic community with valuable insights for further analysis on Stalin and Stalinism. But it is probably more suited for an historian than for a general reader.

Reading "Triumph and Tragedy" is, quite simply, a life-altering
experience. Volkogonov was a loyal member of the Red Army and
Communist Party when he gained access to the whole of the KGB's
archives. As he researched the past, his level of disenchantment grew
until the very core of his world-view was torn asunder. This book is
written unevenly, as Volkogonov was still struggling to absorb the
historical record as he wrote. Nevertheless, the occasional
awkwardness serves to drive home the horror of this period. The
experience is as if the reader can feel the author there with them,
reeling from it all. While the book certainly contains much
interesting historical information, particularly with respect to
Stalin's purges of the Red Army and its affects on WWII, it is also
much, much more. When I read it, the phrase "the horror, the horror"
from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" kept coming into my mind.

This is the best biography of Stalin there is, in my opinion. Volkogonov simply had the access to the kind of materials no one else had. This book takes full advantage of them. It correctly depicts Stalin as a great actor who sold his image to the masses, the image of benevolent and infallible ruler. In contrast to his fascist counterparts, Hitler and Mussolini, Stalin did not have a good speaking ability, and often read his boring speeches monotonously. But his self-assured and reassuring monotony came to have a hypnotic effect. His smile and almost goofy mustache and eyebrows covered the soul of a despot.

Stalin was a single-minded individual: for him, power came before everything else. A Georgian nationalist who called himself Koba in his youth and resented Russian rule over his people, he rose to become Stalin (man of steel) who ruled over the new Russian Empire called the Soviet Union. Volkogonov gives us the most factual biography yet of the man who slaughtered millions in the name of the workers' paradise and future generations; the man who feared and obsessed over Adolph Hitler and who ultimately defeated him; the man whose cruelty and destruction are a warning to all future generations not to lend a sympathetic ear to promises of future earthly utopias in exchange for absolute power and elimination of civil rights.

This is one of the most informative books ever written about the people who ruled the Soviet Union. Being a highly centralized, totalitarian state, the Soviet Union acquired and lost much of its character as its rulers came and went. And the rulers were General Secrertaries of the communist party. Stalin brought crush indurstrialization, famine, and purges--millions of innocent people died, inclduing some of the most devoted communist revolutionaries. Khruschev tried reform, with some success in political liberalization, but his agricultural policy failed miserably. Brezhnev was compromise incarnate and, in his later years, aloof and passive. Andropov had a vision of reform based on social discipline and strict control, and economic accountability. Chernenko, who was a tireless bureaucrat in his youth, was simply a cripple almost the moment he assumed power. Then came Gorbachev and changed the course of history.

The book makes for a fascinating read. The leaders of the Soviet state were all too human, with this exception, that perhaps they craved power more than ordinary people do and could play politics like Paganini could play the violin. However, Stalin's lust for power, combined with his paranoia, may put him in a qualitatively different category--that of the world's most cruel dictators.

The book can be challenging at times, because it presents so many facts. Its highly archival nature does disrupt the smooth flow of the narrative. But for the fact starved Russians at least this may be a welcome change. The Soviet Union, outside the most elite circles, was almost devoid of any meaningful information about politics and political history. Ideology and propaganda ruled. Rhetorical arguments and logical exercises always came before fact, and before feelings of real living Soviet people. Thus in a way, even Volkogonov's factual excess is a welcome change.

A wonderful read. Volkogonov has written other biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky which I also highly recommend. THis book is a waltz through the lives of the leaders of the soviet union. VOlkogonov takes for granted that you have some background. He takes you on a jurney into the private lives of the dictators.

For those that say he rambbles the reality is that he is Russian, he is not a writer by trade and yet he overcame geat obstacles to write the books he did before he died. They should be viewed as treasrers and not condemned for their lack of clarity which stems more from the russian mind then from the authors inability to contrust a coheren argument.

Volkogonov has not produced his best work here, but a work which is wholly approachable, entertaining and interesting...the way a good history should be written. Reading an historical text need not be like washing down a bowl of cornflakes with sand rather then milk. Volkogonov has become the "Suetonius" of Soviet Russia....and his text with its humor and occasional intimate details and also personal experiences is as interesting a read as the former's "Lives of the Twelve Caesars."

A major disappointment for anyone looking for an objective and analyzing view of Lenins role in history. It seems the author is cunningly familiar with the old saying "if you can't beat them, join them". Full of details, it surely is, and while many are certainly accurate, the facts are a mish-mash mixed into a huge pot and drawn at random, put into the text and spiced up with personal "views". Already on page 2 the tone is readily set, "It is worth noting that both Lenin and his father lost their considerable mental powers much earlier than might be thought normal."; pointing out Lenins unfortunate disease and hinting insanity!

If one can neglect and bias-adjust the book (not an easy task!), it contains several interesting facts! I strongly suggest ANY other book on Lenin though, if a more scientifical analysis is expected! ...

This volume appears to be an abridged version of a much longer work in Russian and though it is labelled as a biography is much less linear in format and chronology than one normally expects from this designation. This is however no drawback and around the main developments in Lenin's life the writer frequently jumps forward in time, and occasionally backwards, to explore the consequences, or antecedents, of specific decisions, policies and actions of Lenin and his circle. A degree of familiarity with the revolutionary period is assumed - not unreasonably in the case of a Russian readership - and a Western reader coming fresh to the subject might more profitably start elsewhere - "A People's Tragedy" by Orlando Figges being a safe bet. The author writes from the position of a disillusioned disciple and, as a Kremlin insider in both the Late-Soviet and Post-Soviet periods, he gives valuable insights into the difficulties of breaking away from orthodoxies of thought built up over decades - even a character as courageous as Gorbachev is seen from minutes of a 1983 Central Committee meeting to be unable to cope with the challenge of a mildly dissident stage-play. The book draws heavily on Soviet archives that were secret to the early 1990s and, though one must have some uncertainty as to how selectively the author has utilised them, the overall argument that there is a considerably greater degree of continuity between Leninist and Stalinist attitudes policies than has hitherto been recognised is developed very powerfully. The writer anchors Lenin's personality, and the development of his thought, in his family background, in the Russia of the late nineteenth century, and in the artificial world of political exile in the years preceding the revolution. The latter period comes across as Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" made flesh and one becomes uncomfortably aware that the endless theorising, sectarian infighting and pamphleteering of those years, conducted in conditions of comfort bordering on luxury, and divorced from any practical appreciation of actual conditions in Russia, made a later resort to extremist measures, not only easy, but perhaps inevitable. Brutality of thought and callousness in decision making comes easiest to those who have seen neither privation not bloodshed at first hand - and indeed one is struck by the extent to which Lenin managed to insulate himself personally from such realities to the very end of his life. The mechanics of establishing power and winning the Civil War are well described, with insights into personalities little known in the West providing many fascinating digressions on the way. Despite the horror, waste and tragedy involved in the Bolshevik victory however one is left with the disturbing reflection: "What was the Alternative?" - not just in the moral but in the pragmatic sense. The period between the February and October Revolutions had thrown up neither vision nor leadership of any lasting power and the various White factions that emerged from 1918 onwards were equally bankrupt in both competence and ideology. Against this background the triumph of Leninism - bleak, clear-sighted and single-minded - seems to have been all but inevitable.

When the former state known as the Soviet Union withered away in January, 1991, many Communist sympathizers around the globe expressed both confusion and wonder: Is this the indication that the final stage of the worker's revolution is only now beginning? Or, is this final proof that the great Bolshevik experiment has failed? Even now, ten years after the demise of the political aspect of the world's largest and most truculent empire, those who languished in its thrall--Eastern Europeans, Southeast Asians, refugees from the Third World--continue to worry about what could be coming next. After all, most with direct experience of the brutal tactics begun by Vladimir Iliych Lenin know first-hand that nearly 100 years of revolutionary activity don't simply vanish in the space of weeks or months.

Hence, it is often necessary for us to review history, careful to examine what Communism, as envisaged by its leading adherents, really meant or still means. Dimitri Volkogonov's "new biography" of the father of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat seeks to shed some light on this, bringing to the table, he is quick to point out, new information long locked away in the archives of the supreme Soviet. Amazingly, however, Volkogonov repeatedly issues sad news: this document or that document, while reputed to have existed at one time or another, simply disappeared; this document, while extant, has been redacted of crucial information; these documents, while supposedly copied faithfully, may have been changed. In other words, Volkogonov, while his heart seems to be in the right place regarding getting to the "essential truth" of Vladimir Lenin's personality and the cult thereof, is also inadvertently falling victim to the narrow lens of any and all interpretations of history.

This much we know: Lenin, though lauded as a gentle man with a certain compassion for the working class, was not a member of the working class and had a tendency to try to separate himself from the concerns of the working class whenever possible. For example, during the long "locked train ride" out of Germany" in 1917, Lenin, coming upon Bolshevik workers who had been wounded in battle, blanched: He didn't offer aid, nor did he go out of his way to insure the future protection of workers who, it seems, were only tools of the revolution, not human beings.

In the long run, Volkogonov's interpretation of events hinges on a crucial distinction many American readers may miss: The distinction between liberty and power. This is something American commentators have lost over the years. The pursuit of power for the sake of power is altogether different from the pursuit of power for the sake of liberty. Lenin, sadly, seemed to have a cynical attitude towards liberty. He disdained the liberal tradition, just as, oddly enough, do America's right wing AM radio commentators.