As a symbol of revolution, Vladimir Lenin lived on throughout the century that followed his death. This symbol was there in the hunger marches and anti-fascist street battles of the 1930s, in the block-by-block resistance at Stalingrad, in the partisan risings across Europe, in the underground war against apartheid, and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Yet he was also kept alive in the iconography of the Moscow Show Trials against his old comrades, and in the slogans of the socialist-humanist reformers of the Prague Spring. As Langston Hughes memorably lyricized, this Lenin “walked around the world.” But whatever the political crusades for which his embalmed mummy was conscripted, Lenin the man died of a stroke on January 21, 1924.

A hundred years on, a new book from socialist activist and historian Paul Le Blanc offers a welcome reappraisal of Lenin’s revolutionary life and thought. Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution follows Lenin from his Simbirsk childhood through his discovery of Marxism, his entrance into Russia’s revolutionary movement, and the rise of the Bolsheviks — from repression through war, Red October, the revolutionary government, and the Cassandra-like “last struggle” against the seeds of Stalinism. It has been described as “perhaps the best introduction to Lenin available in English.”

Owen Dowling sat down with Paul Le Blanc to discuss Lenin’s life and death, his contributions to the arsenal of socialist thought, and his significance for the Left today.