Conspirator: Lenin in Exile

Description

A revealing look at Lenin's 17 year exile and the role he played in bringing Revolution to Russia Conspirator is the compelling story of Lenin's exile- the years in which he and his political collaborators plotted a revolution that would change 20th century history. It tells the story of Lenin in the long and difficult years leading up to the Russian Revolution, years that were spent constantly on the move in and around Europe in the company of his loyal and longsuffering wife Nadezhda Krupskaya. Conspirator strips away the arid politics of Lenin's official life and reveals the real man, as well as describing his many conflicts, personal and political, with those who shared his exile. It also looks at the loyal circle of women who unquestioningly supported Lenin, at Russian emigre lives in the enclaves of the cities in they lived and the risks taken in support of Lenin's vision by the wider network of Russian revolutionaries in the underground movement, both at home and abroad.

Helen Rappaport is an historian and Russianist with a specialism in the Victorians and revolutionary Russia. Her books include Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War, and Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the death that changed the monarchy, as well as Beautiful For Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street - Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer. She lives in West Dorset.

Vivid ... Lenin's ruthless determination to seize power in October 1917 probably owed much to his awareness that he had but one chance to escape the world of paranoia and conspiracy in which he had operated for so long, and that Rappaport evokes so successfully. -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times * Pretty much essential reading for anyone interested in Russian history -- Scott Pack In Helen Rappaport's vivid account, we finally have a worthy counterpart to Simon Sebag Montefiore's Young Stalin -- George Eaton * New Statesman * Helen Rappaport presents an exhaustive, almost week-by-week account of this period when the great Bolshevik (at times, almost the only Bolshevik) and his wife Nadya hopped from one European city to another, dodging secret policemen, living from hand to mouth and tirelessly writing, debating, organising, plotting, plotting, plotting . . . -- Roger Hutchinson * Scotsman *