Lenin on the Train

“Merridale’s account benefits from her thorough research . . . and vividly reminds us of how the fateful events of 1917 depended on a seemingly small episode.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Catherine Merridale, a distinguished historian of Russia and the Soviet Union . . . uses [Lenin’s] journey as the centerpiece of a broader account of the fall of czarism and the mounting Bolshevik pressure on the government that replaced it.”—The Wall Street Journal

“A sharply written, authoritative account of Lenin’s train journey.”—Financial Times

“Merridale brings to her subject a scholar’s deep knowledge and a lively narrative style. It is a work that enlightens as well as it entertains.”—Literary Review

“Catherine Merridale is one of the foremost foreign historians of Russia, combining wry insights with deep sympathy for the human beings suffering the tragedies she writes about . . . Lenin on the Train combines diplomatic intrigue, spycraft, towering personalities, bureaucratic bungling, military history and ideology.”—The Economist

“Merridale’s excellent book . . . does an exemplary job of covering the complex history of the denials, evasions and cover-ups perpetrated by the Bolshevik leader and his successors.”—Dallas Morning News

“Memorable . . . a richly detailed book that turns familiar material into an intense adventure."—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Merridale tells the extraordinary story of Lenin’s history-making journey. Drenched in atmosphere, [her] account has all the stuff of a spy thriller.”—Newsday

“Twice I missed my stop on the Tube reading this book . . . this is a jewel among histories, taking a single episode from the penultimate year of the Great War, illuminating a continent, a revolution and a series of psychologies in a moment of cataclysm and doing it with wit, judgment and an eye for telling detail . . . Catherine Merridale is one of those historians whose work allows you to understand something more about the world we inhabit now.”—David Aaronovitch, The Times (UK)

“Catherine Merridale, an experienced and enthusiastic historian of Russia, has chosen the pivotal moment of Lenin’s slow and halting odyssey to hang her history of how this ruthless fanatic hijacked a revolution.”—The Guardian (UK)

“The suberb, funny, fascinating story of Lenin’s trans-European rail journey to power and how it shook the world”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard

“In vivid prose, [Merridale]recounts the whole engine of revolution . . . A superbly written narrative history that draws together and makes sense of scattered data, anecdotes, and minor episodes, affording us a bigger picture of events that we now understand to be transformative.”—Kirkus Reviews

“History recovered as living drama . . . Merridale smuggles readers onto a train leaving Zurich in April 1917 that is carrying explosive freight: Vladimir Lenin, the firebrand who will kindle a revolutionary conflagration in Russia.”—Booklist

“A colorful, suspenseful, and well-documented narrative.”—Publishers Weekly