Took the Thirteen-Year-Old to see "Goodbye, Lenin!" on Wednesday night. He loved it. He said that he could get about 30% of the German soundtrack without looking at the subtitles. His German teacher can't take the class because (a) it's rated R, and (b) to get the jokes requires that you actually know substantial amounts of post-WWII German history.
I was most tickled by the analogy between the GDR's relationship with its citizens on the one hand and Alex's relationship with his mother on the other: both Alex and the government being desperate to keep Alex's mother and the GDR's citizens as far out of touch with reality as possible, and going through extraordinary contortions to try to keep them so. Excellent movie
The Thirteen-Year-Old prepared for the movie by reading Timothy Garten Ash's The Magic Lantern. Now he is curious and wants to know what to read to learn about Lenin. I'm tempted to recommend the Lenin-Trotsky sections--p. 347 ff.--of Edmund Wilson's _To the Finland Station_. Anybody have any better suggestions?
Posted by DeLong at April 23, 2004 02:26 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postTen Days That Shook the World, natch.
If I'm remembering the author's name right, Robert Service recently published a good full-length biography of Lenin.
Posted by: Marcus Stanley on April 23, 2004 02:42 PMPersonally, I loathed To The Finland Station. There must be a better book, where "better" here means "imparting more content."
Posted by: Steve Laniel on April 23, 2004 02:47 PMThe State and Revolution
Not biographical and has nothing about how things worked out, but it explains how he saw the world better than anything else. (Readable, but without historical background may need an edition with good notes.) The most influential political work of the 20th century?
Posted by: JK on April 23, 2004 03:19 PMHitler and Stalin : Parallel Lives by Alan Bullock.
Very well written and very readable.
OK - so the previous book (Hitler and Stalin) not about Lenin, but still very good - my favourite history book
Robert Services' Book is called "Lenin - a Biography", and it incorporates information gleaned from Soviet archives.
I'd seccond the reccomendations of Service's Lennin, its a great book. The other book that I've been most impressed by is Richard Pipes A Concise History of the Russian Revolution. Its not solely about Lennin, but it is a great, highly readable account of the Russian Revolution and the immediate aftermath. You won't learn as much about Lennin as you would from Service, but yo get a much better overview of the causes of the revolution and the other actors in the Bolshevik party.
Posted by: jjbman1121 on April 23, 2004 03:47 PMI'd second the recomendation of Service's book. Its probably the best biography of Lennin available, and its definitely the most readable. The other book I'd reccomend is Richard Pipes A Concise History of the Russian Revolution. Its the best overview I've found of the causes of the revolution and it does a great job covering the other leading Bolsheviks. It also does a great job of covering the aftermath of the revolution, through the death of Lennin.
Posted by: jjbman1121 on April 23, 2004 03:55 PMRead Imperialism - The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Just over 100 pages. The dynamics of capitalism haven't changed significantly since he wrote it (1916, 1920).
Posted by: Mike Fahey on April 23, 2004 03:56 PMI think I've settled on the last section of Wilson's _To the Finland Station_, followed by Pipes's _Three "Whys" of the Russian Revolution_.
Posted by: Brad DeLong on April 23, 2004 04:36 PMSoltzhenitsyn's "Lennin In Zurich".
BTW, Bullock's "Hitler and Stalin - Parallel
Lives" is good.
The title, actually, should have been "Good Bye Honecker"
Go, go Brad go!
In "Ashenden" one story is set in Russia just as the Mensheviks are overthrown by the Bolsheviks,on the spot reporting by a good writer.
Posted by: big al on April 23, 2004 06:12 PMWolfe's Three Who Made a Revolution
Posted by: pine on April 23, 2004 08:53 PMPersonally, I really liked the white album. It's much better than his solo work ;)
I don't know your 13 year old, but wouldn't he enjoy reading a good piece of historical figure even more than a dense historical account? That said, I don't know what to recommend. Does Howard Fast have something?
Posted by: Ennis on April 23, 2004 09:21 PMyes, yes, but isn't Goodbye Lenin a great and tender film? It was so _spooky_ to see those streets again, curiously beautiful in their absence of advertising.
Posted by: Andrew Brown on April 23, 2004 11:50 PMThanks! When the film came out in the US, it was only showing in NY and LA. Now that I know it's showing in the Bay Area, I'll got see it this weekend.
If your son can get 30% of the dialog, consiider sending him to a Goethe Institut youth program over the summer (assuming he's interested.) He'll come back able to understand more than 50%, and curiously able to understand foreigners speaking German better than Germans speaking German.
Posted by: Larry B on April 24, 2004 12:11 AM"A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924" by Orlando Figes.
One of my favorite all-time books.
Posted by: Peter on April 24, 2004 03:09 PMTake him to see Tom Stoppard's Travesties. That will really pique his interest!
Posted by: liberal japonicus on April 24, 2004 04:17 PMI'm looking at the three-volume Works of Lenin from the Soviet publishing house on my shelves now (admittedly, supporting a basketwork cassowary on the out-of-reach for-display shelf, but even so). Come on, go for the primary sources; there must be a billion of them in print and thus readily available from secondhand sources. Who was it who said that Lenin had the shortest distance ever between the word and the deed? I'll leave you to google it.
Posted by: Chris BORTHWICK on April 25, 2004 04:28 AMThings written about Lenin by Soviet writers in 1930s - 1980s are fun to read, especially the ones for kids.
Posted by: Mike on April 26, 2004 08:25 AMPlayboy
Posted by: GAB on April 26, 2004 09:45 AMI'd recommend Josh Muravchik's section on Lenin from "Heaven on Earth". Yeah, Muravchik's an AEI scholar, but he's also Manny Muravchik's son and the ex-Chair of the Young Socialists League; the book is surprisingly good.
Pipes is a good choice, as might be Werth's section on the Russian Revolution from the "Black Book of Communism". I can't think of a good book on Lenin from a social-democratic perspective; Irving Howe's "Essential Works of Socialism" has excerpts from Lenin's writings; your kid might be interested in reading Mr. Ulanyov's own writings.
Posted by: Tom on April 26, 2004 02:05 PMOk kinda off the wall, but "Nicholas and Alexandra". they make a bit of an Omega-Alpha pair, doncha think?
BTW, this movie just made it to Phoenix. The best ferin-flik I've seen since Dirty Pretty Things. Excellent in fact.
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