Lenin on the Train

January 16, 2017
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.

Starred review from February 1, 2017
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.

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February 1, 2017
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 chroniclersEdmund 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2016

A Wolfson History Prize winner for Red Fortress, Merridale here tracks Vladimir Lenin's April 1917 journey by rail from Zurich, where he was exiled, to stirred-up Petrograd and the revolution to come. Traveling across Germany was dangerous on all counts--Russians might see his acceptance of safe passage from the enemy as traitorous, and the Germans were indeed anticipating that Lenin's return might further destabilize Russia.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2017

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 Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2017

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 Journal, LLC Used with permission.