Legacy

With his body was embalmed and building high statues were erected to him Lenin’s memory seemed secured for ever. Yet how did his memory and his actual legacy differ? Did he really set the course for a future better Russia, or were his ideas of revolution better on paper than in reality, in the hands of those had empowered?

In this film Dr Lara Douds (Northumbria University) asks us to appreciate that while Lenin led a self-professed ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, he was not himself a dictator. With great effort and debate, Lenin would often win arguments and had great influence, but he did not always get his way within his cabinet unlike the politics of Russia under Stalin. Dr Douds reflects that the mythmaking around the cult of Lenin during the succession struggle often obscures Lenin’s day to day politics and that we need to be careful to humanise Lenin to obtain a better understanding of his role and importance within Russian history.