Lenin on Global History and the Global Historiography on Lenin
Lenin on Global History and the Global Historiography on Lenin

Summary/Abstract: Lenin’s place in the development of the global Marxist history of ideas is frequently misconstrued today, attributing a self-serving, power-grabbing, voluntarist and opportunistic tendency to Lenin’s intellectual development and his new findings and innovative analysis of capitalism. Lenin’s true legacy must be reclaimed on monopoly capitalism and imperialism, and this paper aims to place them in not only Lenin’s real contemporary political and intellectual context, but also traces how his concepts have fared since his passing, up to the early 21st century. The supposed contradiction and dichotomy of a utopian democratic tendency and rigid determinism in Lenin are here altogether removed, and the coherence, realism and historical rootedness of Lenin’s thought reclaimed. On the 100th anniversary of the Great Russian Revolution it is worth remembering Lenin’s analysis of global and local history not only because he shaped global history, but because he provided an analytical framework. Lenin’s analysis is an important component of the history of the revolution and its intellectual preconditions. Recalling some key elements of this conceptualization of history is worthy of note since they are still relevant today in a broader sense. This study aims at presenting the relationship between Russian and global history in Lenin’s analysis and also revealing the elements of his theory that have become a constitutive part of historical thinking.

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