In today’s Washington Times, Martin Rubin reviews LENIN’S PRIVATE WAR: THE VOYAGE OF THE PHILOSOPHY STEAMER AND THE EXILE OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA by Lesley Chamberlain (St. Martin’s Press):
“The 20th century had more than its share of ruthless despots, but it’s a pretty good bet that Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, better known by his soubriquet Lenin, will always have a place near the top of any list of them. When the writer Maxim Gorky, himself a supporter of the Bolsheviks, went to plead with Lenin for the life of one of the Romanov Grand Dukes, who were then being shot en masse on the grounds that he was a fine historian, Russia’s new ruler told him that the revolution had no need of historians.
“Apparently, Lenin’s twisted worldview also had no use for free-thinking intellectuals in general, and Lenin’s Private War, the latest book by Lesley Chamberlain, that most insightful of historians now studying the newly revived history and culture of Russia, tells the extraordinary story of the mass expulsion from their motherland of its finest economists, philosophers, scientists and thinkers. In short, the intelligentsia, that word so associated with Russia, was no longer wanted there after the Bolshevik Revolution.”
For the full review, click here.
—Katherine Hyde