Synopses & Reviews
In 1922, Lenin personally drew up a list of some 160 undesirable intellectuals mostly philosophers, academics, scientists and journalists to be deported from the new Soviet State. Were going to cleanse Russia once and for all he wrote to Stalin, whose job it was to oversee the deportation. Two ships sailed from Petrograd that autumn, taking Old Russias eminent men and their families away to what would become permanent exile in Berlin, Prague and Paris. Lesley Chamberlain creates a rich portrait of this chilling historical moment, evoked with immediacy through the journals, letters, and memoirs of the exiles.
Review
"Recounted in fascinating detail...Chamberlain brings these forgotten figures back to life with great skill and sympathy."--William Grimes,
The New York Times"Lenin's Private War is infused with a deep understanding of the rich history of Russian thought."--
The Seattle Times"Movingly describes the experience of exile in ways that echo that great exile novelist Nabokov himself...Chamberlain has a rare gift."
--Sunday Telegraph "Compelling, laudably unsentimental and deeply significant to the history of ideas."
--The Guardian"Both learned and absorbing…Chamberlain has written a fine monument to a generation of thinkers who addressed questions of contemporary relevance and deserve to be better known."
--The Economist
Review
"Moving, deeply thoughtful . . . Revel in the glorious spectacle of the failure of Lenin's attempts to murder art, history, and faith."--The Sunday Times (London)
"[Chamberlain] brings these forgotten figures back to life with great skill and empathy . . . making a strong case for the importance of their banishment as a turning point in the road from revolution to Communist tyranny."--The New York Times
"Infused with a deep understanding of the rich history of Russian thought . . . Less a study of the formation of the Soviet police state than a reflective, nuanced survey of the intelligentsia from the late 19th century to the outbreak of the Second World War."--The Seattle Times
"Chamberlain has put together a detailed account of a little-remembered but important episode of that consolidation. She has found new material that the fall of the Soviet Union has made available."--Associated Press
"A much-needed account, the only one in English, of this shameful moment in Russian history . . . Chamberlain refuses to just report. . . . She insists on making critical sense of her amorphous subject."--The Chronicle of Higher Education
"[Chamberlain] has not only honored the individuals so shabbily treated but has shone a spotlight on an important tradition of idealist philosophy so integral to Russian thinking, which Lenin could not, for all his efforts, quite extinguish."--The Washington Times
Synopsis
In 1922, Lenin personally drew up a list of some 160 'undesirable' intellectuals - mostly philosophers, academics, scientists and journalists - to be deported from the new Soviet State. 'We're going to cleanse Russia once and for all' he wrote to Stalin, whose job it was to oversee the deportation. Two ships sailed from Petrograd that autumn, taking Old Russia's eminent men and their families away to what would become permanent exile in Berlin, Prague and Paris. Lesley Chamberlain creates a rich portrait of this chilling historical moment, evoked with immediacy through the journals, letters, and memoirs of the exiles.
About the Author
LESLEY CHAMBERLAIN is a writer and reviewer distinguished for her wide-ranging work from travel (in the Communist Mirror) to philosophy (Nietzsche in Turin). Her most recent book is Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia. She lives in London, England.