The republication of Harding's classic work on Lenin comes at a moment of renewal in interest in, and writing about, the controversial Russian socialist. Recent titles include Verso Books' recent collection of Lenin's writing, edited by celebrated cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek, "Revolution at the Gates."

Caricatured as a superhuman idol in the former Communist states, the Russian revolutionary socialist V. I. Lenin has long been reversely caricatured in the West as an authoritarian elitist. In this brilliant, carefully researched analysis, Neil Harding challenges these traditional Cold War interpretations of Lenin's thought and activity. Harding shows how Lenin's flexible and continuously changing theoretical, strategic and tactical insights were firmly grounded in the emancipatory potential for working-class revolution in Russia and globally.