Lars Lih

Lenin’s legacy: Ordinary miracles and revolutionary ambition

Given the recent marking of the centenary of Lenin’s death, Lars T Lih looks at what his ‘intricate polemic’ in ‘What is to Be Done?’ might offer today’s left.

Lessons of Russia's October 1917 revolution (Part II) — What kind of revolutionary organisation?

Read Part I “Coup or mass insurrection?” here.

Thirteen to two: Petrograd Bolsheviks debate the April Theses

'Letter from Afar', corrections from up close: Censorship or retrofit?

In March 1917 Alexandra Kollontai, then in Oslo, provided a link between Lenin,

The proletariat and its ally: The logic of Bolshevik ‘hegemony’

By Lars Lih

‘All Power to the Soviets!’ - Biography of a slogan

Banners: “Power to the Workers’, Soldiers’,

Lars Lih: Workers and intellectuals – A ‘revolutionary Social Democrat’ consensus

Lars Lih: The ironic triumph of ‘old Bolshevism’ -- the ‘April debates’ and their impact on Bolshevik strategy

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Lars Lih: Russia 1917 — Bolshevism was fully armed

Pravda editor Lev Kamenev.

[Click HERE for more by or about Lars Lih. For more discussion on Lenin, click HERE.]

Article by Lars Lih, introduction by John Riddell

April 22, 2015 -- Johnriddell.wordpress.com, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Did the Bolsheviks, as has often been argued, set aside their pre-1914 strategy in April 1917 on Lenin’s insistence? Recent studies by Lars Lih criticise this thesis, maintaining that the actual course followed by the Bolsheviks in 1917 was close to that of pre-war “Old Bolshevism”.

In the following article, Lih tests his conclusion by examining the editorial course of the Bolsheviks’ main newspaper, Pravda, soon after the February revolution and before Lenin’s return to Russia.

Lih’s text is followed by both a translation and the original Russian text of a March 1917 Pravda editorial by Lev Kamenev, and by a note on further reading.

Heroic class leadership: Lars T. Lih's ‘Lenin’