Lenin: A Biography

“Lenin has some claim to being the most influential person in all of the 20th century. Without Lenin, there would have been no Russian Revolution. It was he who insisted, against the initial resistance of his Bolshevik colleagues, that the Bolsheviks seize power in the then capital of the Russian Empire, St Petersburg. They did that in 1917 and consolidated it in a bloody civil war thereafter…The book that I found most useful is a biography by the British historian Robert Service, who is an expert on the Soviet Union. He has written a number of books, knows all of the literature about Lenin, and has written a relatively compact single-volume biography. It shows Lenin warts and all, and there were lots of warts.” Read more...

The Best Biographies of 20th Century Leaders

Michael Mandelbaum, International Relation