Review by New York Times Review
CATHERINE MERRIDALE IS wellknown for her books on Soviet history, particularly for "Red Fortress," her account of the Kremlin, and "Night of Stone," on how Russians coped with violent death in the 20th century. Her latest book, "Lenin on the Train," has a tighter focus than these and vividly reminds us how the fateful events of 1917 depended on a seemingly small episode: Vladimir Lenin's return to Russia from political exile in Switzerland. With all the inevitable attention on the Bolshevik takeover in October 1917, when Lenin and Leon Trotsky seized power from the ill-fated provisional government, the extraordinary events of February and March should not be forgotten. It was then that unexpected riots over lack of food and fuel by thousands of people in the imperial capital of Petrograd and the ensuing mutiny by garrison troops compelled Czar Nicholas II to abdicate, ending 300 years of Romanov rule and handing political authority to a group of high-minded liberal figures. "Russia became the freest country in the world," Merridale writes, "as the new government granted an amnesty for political prisoners, abolished the death penalty and dissolved what was leftof the detested secret police." (It also abolished the infamous Pale of Settlement, which had required the czar's Jewish subjects to live within a defined area of the country; they were now made equal before the law.) The provisional government inherited power from a discredited autocracy that had resisted any sensible move to establish a constitutional monarchy. Leaders like Alexander Kerensky, Paul Miliukov and Georgy Lvov tried in vain to establish a stable government and withstand the appeal of extreme forces. But the Romanov collapse was so sudden and so thorough that it leftno credible institutions capable of governing effectively, let alone in the midst of widespread social turmoil, an imploding economy and the devastations of World War I. To explain the significance of Lenin's return a month after the czar's abdication, Merridale reconstructs a familiar story: how the war sapped confidence in the monarchy; how the provisional government had to share power with the radical Soviet of Workers' Deputies; and how Lenin, learning about the autocracy's collapse from his place of exile in Zurich, was so bent on returning that he accepted the assistance of Germany to travel more than 2,000 miles over eight days in a sealed railway car through Germany, Sweden and Finland before finally reaching Petrograd in April. (The exact date varies depending on what calendar you cite; unlike most other countries in the world, Russia in 1917 still used the Julian calendar.) Lenin's sojourn in Zurich remains the stuffof popular imagination; both Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (in a book called, simply, "Lenin in Zurich") and Tom Stoppard (in his play "Travesties") depicted Lenin in Zurich plotting revolution. Merridale's account benefits from her thorough research, particularly concerning the circumstances surrounding Lenin's return; the train's route, which has confused earlier historians; and the intentions of the Germans, whose armies faced Russian forces on the Eastern front. Lenin had always opposed the war, giving Kaiser Wilhelm II's regime hope that his return would have the effect of "disabling the Russian colossus" by undermining the provisional government's resolve to remain loyal to its British and French allies and not seek a separate peace. But Lenin understood he was compromising his credibility by cooperating with the hated German enemy. Lenin, moreover, had accepted the kaiser's money - "German gold" - to help finance Bolshevik propaganda and amplify his strident appeals against the provisional government and anyone, Bolshevik or otherwise, who thought of cooperating with it. If his enemies were to confirm his reliance on the kaiser's assistance, he would face arrest for treason and the collapse of the Bolsheviks' aim to seize power. But Lenin, unable to travel by boat because of Britain's refusal to help leftist exiles like him, believed he had no alternative except to work with Berlin. (After Trotsky set offby boat from New York at the end of March, British officials arrested him in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and held him for a month with German prisoners of war. Trotsky gained his release only after vehement protests in Russia; he reached Petrograd a month after Lenin.) The cover of "Lenin on the Train" portends the trouble to follow. In a notorious Soviet-era painting, Lenin is shown descending from the train to greet an exuberant crowd of admirers at Petrograd's Finland Station. Behind him looms the image of a smiling Stalin, as if that future tyrant had been aboard as well - "a visual fairy tale," in Merridale's words, to reinforce Stalin's claim that he had always been Lenin's principal lieutenant. In fact, Stalin had faced internal exile in Siberia before reaching Petrograd in March. Lenin was greeted by hundreds of followers, among them prominent Bolsheviks like Lev Kamenev and Fedor Raskolnikov, while others, most notably Grigory Zinoviev and Grigory Sokolnikov, accompanied him on the train. Stalin later had them killed. But it was Lenin himself who made it clear that the Bolsheviks would reject democratic values. He "had not traveled back to join a coalition," Merridale writes, but to undermine the provisional government and establish a dictatorship in the name of the proletariat. It was Lenin who instituted severe censorship, established one-party rule and resorted to terror against his political enemies. Stalin took these measures to further extremes for his own sinister purposes. Merridale is right to recall Winston Churchill's famous observation about Lenin's return. The Germans, Churchill wrote, "turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland to Russia." Lenin was greeted on his return by hundreds of followers. Stalin later had them killed. JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN'S most recent book is "The Last Days of Stalin."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 18, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Merridale smuggles readers onto a train leaving Zurich in April 1917 that is carrying explosive freight: Vladimir Lenin, the firebrand who will kindle a revolutionary conflagration in Russia. To be sure, this epoch-making train has attracted other chroniclers Edmund Wilson, Alan Moorehead, Michael Pearson, and Marcel Liebman. But Merridale corrects factual errors made by predecessors and opens a fresh interpretive perspective. Personal reenactment of Lenin's eight-day train-and-ferry journey gives force to materials uncovered through assiduous research in newly opened archives as Merridale resolves perplexities long surrounding the political gambles, devious espionage, and shadowy financing that transport Lenin through Germany on a sealed train bound for a land tempestuously shedding its czarist past and desperate for a leader to guide it into an uncharted future. Merridale acknowledges that Lenin's journey now prompts a shudder of horror because it subsequently exposes innocent millions to Stalin's ruthless tyranny. But Merridale also glimpses the forgotten moment when an oppressed people ecstatically welcome Lenin as a political savior offering peace, freedom, and hope. History recovered as living drama.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
British journalist Merridale (Red Fortress) recounts the background of what may have been the most consequential train ride in history, as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin) traveled in a sealed German car that slowly made its way from Switzerland to Petrograd's Finland Station in April 1917 and began fomenting what would become the Bolshevik Revolution later that year. Tracing the trip's progression and its immediate consequences, Merridale looks closely at German efforts to knock Russia out of WWI as well as Bolshevik agitation in Russia and Western Europe. She also mostly debunks the notion that Lenin received large amounts of gold from the Germans, showing that he accepted only modest German subsidies. Merridale examines the machinations of such lesser-known figures as Parvus (Alexander Helphand), Lenin's occasional ally and rival, and how Alexander Kerensky's provisional government sank itself by continuing to fight the Germans in WWI, which strengthened Lenin's hand in resolutely opposing the many Bolsheviks who favored forming a government with the more moderate, prowar Mensheviks. Unfortunately, Merridale's account of the immediate postrevolution period peters out in her discussion of Lenin's "death-cult," as embodied in the Moscow mausoleum that contained his embalmed corpse, and brief address of Stalin's crimes and their aftermath. Merridale's rushed and weak ending detracts from what is otherwise a colorful, suspenseful, and well-documented narrative. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In her new book, -Merridale (Red Fortress) has delicately woven the complex tale of the exiled Vladimir Lenin's trip from Zurich, Switzerland, back to Petrograd, Russia, in 1917, to a nation both part of World War I and the revolution taking place there. Merridale re-creates the difficult journey and vividly takes readers through the history and locales. The result is a gripping narrative with first-hand accounts and sources of Russian history that make the rich, intricate story of the Bolsheviks' journey feel close at hand. The author details the indirect and complex negotiations between the Bolsheviks and Germany, looking to find a revolutionary group to support who could remove Russia from the war. Next, she chronicles Lenin's travels via train, taking readers to Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) to understand the political actions of the British and the French during the critical prerevolutionary period of 1917. The maps and illustrations in this book are to be mentioned, as they aid in understanding the travels of Lenin's "sealed train" through Russia and war-torn Germany. VERDICT This book should be read by anyone interested in war-time history or the history of Russia and the Soviet Union; there is much to be learned here. [See Prepub Alert, 11/16/16.]-Amy Lewontin, Northeastern Univ. Lib., Boston © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
British historian Merridale (Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin, 2013, etc.) fills a lacuna in the canonical record of Soviet communism.Like Sherman's March to the Sea and Hannibal's crossing of the Alps, V.I. Lenin's rail journey from Zurich to Petrograd is one of the most storied journeys in history. It has long been known that Germany brokered the wartime trip, the aim being to enable Lenin to foment revolution and take Russia off the front. However, as the author amply shows, to say "Germany" is to speak too broadly, for while it was just a faction in the civilian government of that country willing to gamble on Lenin's powers of persuasion, "other departments and agencies had budgets of their own" and were "pouring money" into propaganda and sedition so that Russia would sue for peace, leaving Germany to fight a single-front war against the Allies in the West. Of course, as Merridale also shows, the Allies had propaganda budgets as well, though in the end, all that money added up to an "egregious failure rate," just as British efforts to turn Lenin back at the frontier failed. The author explores the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to Lenin's return from decades of exile. Moreover, in vivid prose, she recounts the whole engine of revolution, giving immediacy to the details of Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station and the electrifying result his presence had in an already revolutionary and decidedly mutinous Russia. She also emphasizes little-known aspects and players in the struggle, from the central role Pravda played in transmitting news and its ability "to speak directly to the dispossessed" to the work of the almost unknown revolutionary leader Irakli Tsereteli. A superbly written narrative history that draws together and makes sense of scattered data, anecdotes, and minor episodes, affording us a bigger picture of events that we now understand to be transformative. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
