Lenin in Zürich

Lenin in Zürich – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Lenin in Zürich is a remarkable work by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Gulag Archipelago. It brings together chapters about Vladimir Lenin drawn from Solzhenitsyn’s vast cycle of historical novels about the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel, published separately so that readers could encounter his portrait of the revolutionary leader in one volume.

The book focuses on Lenin’s years in exile in Switzerland during the First World War, from the outbreak of war in 1914 to his departure for Russia in 1917. Isolated, frustrated and often short of money, Lenin lives in Zürich and Bern, quarreling with fellow socialists, writing and plotting, and searching for a way to turn the war into a revolution. Solzhenitsyn portrays him from the inside, through his restless thoughts, impatience, intellectual intensity, contempt for opponents and single-minded will to power.

A central figure in the story is Alexander Parvus, a wealthy revolutionary and businessman with connections to the German government, who proposes using German money to bring revolution to Russia. The book depicts the debates and intrigues surrounding Lenin’s eventual return to Russia, made possible with German assistance, in the famous sealed train.

Based on extensive historical research, the work combines fiction and history to create a psychologically penetrating and critical portrait of the man who would found the Soviet state, and it reflects Solzhenitsyn’s profound opposition to communism.

Lenin in Zürich is a fascinating read for those interested in Russian history, the revolution and Solzhenitsyn’s work. Readers should note that it is a fictionalized portrait, and some interpretations are debated by historians.