Discussed in this essay:

Lenin the Dictator: An Intimate Portrait, by Victor Sebestyen. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 592 pages. $35.

Lenin on the Train, by Catherine Merridale. Metropolitan Books. 368 pages. $30.

Reminiscences of Lenin, by Nadezhda Krupskaya. Haymarket Books. 584 pages. $24.

The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution, by Tariq Ali. Verso. 384 pages. $26.95.

Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through, by Slavoj Žižek. Verso. 256 pages. $19.95.

“Lenin lives!” That was the slogan in the Soviet Union for almost seventy years, even though Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet state, died only seven years into its existence. Uncharismatic…