Poor choice. Would not recommend. Almost all the references are going over my head, and I really don't feel like chasing them down. Maybe I'll pick it back up after studying the 1905 revolution or if I really get into German social democrat history or whatever. I'll finish it I guess, but I expect to retain nothing and learn very little.

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Nobody (save for those with an interest in pre-Revolution Bolshevik internal politics) should be reading it. The title is fantastic but it's on the lower tier of Lenin's works and, as you've discovered, requires a whole lot of context to get anything out of it.

    State and Revolution is a infinitely better starting point with Lenin, and readable without a lot of context. It's clear, concise, and a classic for a reason. Lots of his works are great. I'm sorry the one you're reading right now isn't.

    • wrecker_vs_dracula [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah I'm not deterred from reading more Lenin, just disappointed at the moment and wanting to vent on the internet. I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds this mostly useless.

      • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Glad to hear it! And yeah that's even the academic consensus in some circles. Lars Lih in Lenin Rediscovered: What Is To Be Done? In Context, argues as much (more or less), and spends the rest of the book attempting to contextualize the content of What Is To Be Done within the larger sphere of debate in the Bolshevik/Menshevik world. It's not worth reading or studying without that context, and there's no much you're going to get from it outside of academic curiosities. In fact, much of what Lenin states in the book were just standard democratic socialist (the word had a different context at the time, lol) assumptions widely held by communists across Europe. For actual strategies and innovations of Lenin that pushed him beyond those, you need to look elsewhere at his later works.