Lenin Rediscovered: 'What Is to Be Done?' in Context (Historical Materialism)

What Is to Be Done? has long been interpreted as evidence of Lenin’s “elitist” attitude toward workers. Lih uses a wide range of previously unavailable contextual sources to fundamentally overturn this reading of history’s most misunderstood revolutionary text. He argues that Lenin’s polemic must be seen within the context of a rising worker’s movement in Russia, and shows that Lenin’s perspective fit squarely within the mainstream of the socialist movement of his time.

Rather than the manifesto of an authoritarian leader, Lih reveals a guide to action to help cohere and strengthen a promising movement, which still maintains remarkable relevance to today’s world.

“Clearly written, well-reasoned, and effectively documented, it is a work that no scholar seriously examining the life and thought of Lenin will be able to ignore.”
—Paul Le Blanc, author of Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience: Studies of Communism and Radicalism in the Age of Globalization

“If we are honestly to assess the lessons of the Russian Revolution, then it is essential that we unpick the real Lenin from this shared Stalinist and liberal myth of ‘Leninism’. It would be difficult to praise too highly Lars Lih’s contribution to such an honest reassessment of Lenin’s thought. At its heart, Lih’s book aims to overthrow, and succeeds in overthrowing, what he calls the ‘textbook interpretation’ of Lenin’s What is to be done? Lih thus adds to and deepens the arguments of those who have sought to recover the real Lenin from the Cold War mythology.”
—Paul Blackledge, author, Historical Materialism and Social Evolution

Lars T. Lih is the editor of Stalin's Letters to Molotov, the author of Bread and Authority in Russia 1914-1921. He has taught political science at Wellesley College and currently teaches at the McGill School of Music in Montréal.