The "Fight Against Stalinism" clearly demonstrates how in the last year of his life, Lenin along with Trotsky began a broad struggle against what was finally called Stalinism. This book documents Lenin and Trotsky's fight against Stalin on the improtant issues of the day - the state monopoly of foreign trade, the growth of bureacratism and the treatment of nationaal minorities. Ultimately, Trotsky was murdered by Stalin in the 1930's in Mexico. In "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" Lenin sites the importance of world trade in the beginning of the 20th century. Imperialism is a basic concept that Marx himself dealt with by analysis and debate which Lenin continued as competition created instability throughout the world. Instability caused international war, the emergence of international capital and an increase in industrial monopolies. Both of these books will give the reader an insight to Lenin's thinking during this critical period. His analysis contues to be applicable to modern times which we now call 'global' trade. A Collector's Edition.

The record of Lenin's last and most concentrated political battle against a growing privileged layer, as he sought to set the Communist Party on course to strengthen the alliance of workers and peasants and the voluntary union of soviet Republics.

The bourgeois world at first tried to pretend not to notice the economic successes of the soviet regime -- the experimental proof, that is, of the practicability of socialist methods. The learned economists of capital still often try to maintain a deeply cogitative silence about the unprecedented tempo of Russiaʹs industrial development, or confine themselves to remarks about an extreme "exploitation of the peasantry". They are missing a wonderful opportunity to explain why the brutal exploitation of the peasants in China, for instance, or Japan, or India, never produced an industrial tempo remotely approaching that of the Soviet Union. Facts win out, however, in the end. The bookstalls of all civilized countries are now loaded with books about the Soviet Union. It is no wonder; such prodigies are rare. The literature dictated by blind reactionary hatred is fast dwindling. A noticeable proportion o the newest works on the Soviet Union adopt a favorable, if not even a rapturous, tone. As a sign of the improving international reputation of the parvenu state, this abundance of pro-soviet literature can only be welcomed. Moreover, it is incomparably better to idealize the Soviet Union than fascist Italy. The reader, however, would seek in vain on the pages of this literature for a scientific appraisal of what is actually taking place in the land of the October revolution. -- Description from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/intro.htm (April 12, 2012).

From a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and the prizewinning author of Chernobyl, the essential history of Russian imperialism. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine -- only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation. In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the nation's history. Spanning over 500 years, from the end of the Mongol rule to the present day, Plokhy shows how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin exploited existing forms of identity, warfare, and territorial expansion to achieve imperial supremacy. An authoritative and masterful account of Russian nationalism, Lost Kingdom chronicles the story behind Russia's belligerent empire-building quest.

*Includes pictures of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and important people, places, and events in their lives. *Explains each man's role in the Revolution and its aftermath. *Discusses the conspiracy theories surrounding Stalin's death and how Stalin came to power against Lenin's wishes. *Includes a bibliography for further reading. Among the leaders of the 20th century, arguably none shaped the course of history as much as Vladimir Lenin (1870-1942), the Communist revolutionary and political theorist who led the Bolshevik Revolution that established the Soviet Union. In addition to shaping the Marxist-Leninist political thought that steered Soviet ideology, he was the first Soviet premier until his death and set the Soviet Union on its way to becoming one of the world's two superpowers for most of the century, in addition to being the West's Cold War adversary. As it turned out, the creation of the Soviet Union came near the end of Lenin's life, as he worked so hard that he had burned himself out by his 50s, dying in 1924 after a series of strokes had completely debilitated him. Near the end of his life, he expressly stated that the regime's power should not be put in the hands of the current General Secretary of the Communist Party, Joseph Stalin. Of course, Stalin managed to do just that, modernizing the Soviet Union at a breakneck pace on the backs of millions of poor laborers and prisoners. If Adolf Hitler had not inflicted the devastation of World War II upon Europe, it's quite likely that the West would consider Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) the 20th century's greatest tyrant. Before World War II, Stalin consolidated his position by frequently purging party leaders (most famously Leon Trotsky) and Red Army leaders, executing hundreds of thousands of people at the least. In one of history's greatest textbook examples of the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Stalin's Soviet Union allied with Britain and the United States to defeat Hitler in Europe, with the worst of the war's carnage coming on the eastern front during Germany's invasion of Russia. Nevertheless, the victory in World War II established the Soviet Union as of the world's two superpowers for nearly 50 years, in addition to being the West's Cold War adversary. Along with Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky led the October Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and held crucial posts in the early Soviet governments, but after Lenin's death Trotsky was exiled, persecuted and finally murdered at the behest of his arch-rival, Joseph Stalin. For the final decade of his life, Trotsky was a man trapped in between two worlds. A communist seeking refuge in the capitalist West, Trotsky was deemed a secret agent of the capitalist powers by Stalin's propaganda, but the Soviet Union's enemies also viewed him with suspicion. In the initial aftermath of Lenin's death, Trotsky had been his ally's heir apparent, and for those inclined to believe the Soviet experiment had started promisingly but gone astray, Trotsky became the embodiment of the betrayed promise of the early Bolshevik revolution. There were certain ironies in this widespread sympathetic interpretation of Trotsky's legacy. For the Marxists and Marxist sympathizers appalled by Stalin's paranoid police state, Gulag concentration camps, and strict suppression of dissent, Trotsky was viewed as a humane and cosmopolitan opposite to Stalin. But Trotsky himself had overseen and spearheaded campaigns of persecution against Russians suspected of "counterrevolutionary" leanings, and he had written a long tract defending these "terroristic" measures as necessary safeguards of the revolution. The Soviet Union's Big Three explores the lives and legacies of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin before the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as the crucial roles they played in establishing the Soviet Union and turning it into a modern superpower.