Vladimir Lenin is one name that is known across the world. Rising to power during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, he was the first Communist dictator in history and the architect of the Red Terror - a deadly campaign of political oppression and execution carried out in the earliest years of Soviet Russia. But contrary to his self-avowed image as champion of the proletariat, Lenin was actually raised in an upper-middle-class family of Russian monarchists, with little to mark him out as a future revolutionary.

In this episode James is joined by Victor Sebestyen, a renowned historian of Communism and Russian History. Together they examine the life of Lenin, from his privileged upbringing to his exile in the UK & Europe, and finally to his triumphant return to the motherland during the October Revolution that heralded a the Soviet Era. Looking at the events that shaped Lenin's political mind, it raises the question - was Lenin always destined to usher in a new age of Russian history?

Victor's book is available here.

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