My purposes are:

1. better grasp the concrete flow of historical events since the 1880s until (broadly speaking) the 1930s
2. better understand the role of Lenin in all these stages and the accompanying arguments (not just the well known decisive moments)
3. better understand what kind of personality Lenin had and how this expressed itself in this flow of events

To me it is very important to see how the political standpoints and communist principles that we defend as internationalist, marwist, communists, have developed and expressed themselves concretely in history.

I could read a book on the second international, or on the first world war or on the revolution of 1917, but it is very difficult to read on the first world war or the Revolution of 1917, without knowing what happened before all that and what parties, groups and political tendencies existed. Also difficult to understand are all the controversies and discussions that were held, in response to historical events, e.g. revolutionary war instead of peace, which was defended by the left-bolsheviks in 1918. Biographies are a great help, because they are mostly chronoligcal and not per theme. They tend to be detailed and concrete. Or at least, I think a good biographer should pass on the dominant state of mind and the personality of the protagonist by describing events concretely and with enough details.

Off course, no book is perfect, but I need a good starting point to tackle Lenin. I am also very attracted to the biography written by Lars T Lih. I am however a bit sceptical, because of his minor emphasis on internationalism (according to the writer of the review that I've reffered to above).

I was wondering if their are any "classic" biographies on Lenin, comparable to the biography on Marx, written by Mehring, or the biography on Trotsky, written by Isaac Deutscher, or the biography on Luxemburg, written by Fröhlich.

Rev. grts.