Lenin

39 hrs. 3 min.

Language Russian

Author Lev Danilkin

Narrator Lev Danilkin

Description

What do we really know about Lenin—not the familiar portrait from textbooks, and not the bronze symbol, but a living human being?

Writer and journalist Lev Danilkin offers a fresh look at this figure: to strip away layers of myths and clichés and carry out a meticulous “verification” of Vladimir Ilyich’s personality. The book unfolds a detailed biography—from provincial Simbirsk and Siberian exile to emigration, revolutionary upheavals, and work in the Kremlin offices; from theoretical disputes and the underground to the creation of a new state.

Here, Lenin becomes the key to understanding today’s events. By carefully analyzing his texts, decisions, alliances, and clashes, Danilkin searches for a “code” that makes it possible to read the present: how political turning points are set in motion, by what signs state crises can be recognized, where violence comes from, and what forms resistance takes. The book raises hard questions: what is the real cost of revolution? where is the limit of what is acceptable? at what moment does utopia turn into terror?

In 2017, the novel won the first prize of the “Big Book” award and received the “Book of the Year” prize in the “Prose” category.

Listen to the story of a philosopher who managed to concentrate absolute power in his hands over a vast part of the world, in the expressive performance of Grigory Perelya.