Which biography of V I Lenin would you recommend?
There is a detailed 1960's Soviet biography of Lenin which can be bought on Amazon for cheap: http://www.amazon.com/Vladimir-Ilyic.../dp/B000GLD05U (I have it but have not yet read it) There's a rather brief Stalin-era biography of Lenin online here: http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/Uni...0Institute.pdf There are a number of bourgeois biographies but I cannot comment on their quality, except to say that Robert Service's is probably to be avoided until you read others first, since his three biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky share the distinction of being denounced by everyone, and that Dimitri Volkogonov's is interesting due chiefly to his access to archival materials, since he is otherwise strongly anti-communist and attacks Lenin any chance he can.
Thanks. btw, how is this one* - http://www.flipkart.com/vladimir-i-l...0a%20biography ? It says "Author: Marx Engels Lenin institute". (*Flipkart = Indian version of Amazon)
That's the Stalin-era one I linked to in my post.
Awesome, ordered both (I like reading it in the book form than pdf or kindle). What do you think of the biography "Lenin Re-Discovered" or something like that, by a guy called "Lars Lih"?
He puts forward a number of revisionist formulations in an effort to promote a "new image" of Lenin. I'd avoid his biography until you read other works first.
As a note, the 1960s Soviet revisionist biography I mentioned was scanned online by me a few days back: https://archive.org/details/LeninABiography Overall the biography is of interest, although the revisionists do try to denigrate Stalin and impose their conception of peaceful coexistence on Lenin, among other things.
I would recommend one called "Lenin" by Prof Robert Service; superb historian on Russian History, you can pick it up from Amazon.