ABSTRACT
This essay was first published in Purnell's History of the Twentieth Century, produced in parts (1968-70). In this essay Alan Taylor gives the judgement on Lenin, 'He was a very great man and even, despite his faults, a very good man'. Later in his autobiography, A Personal History (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1983), Alan Taylor recalled visiting Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square in 1925, commenting, 'Lenin looked very attractive with his reddish beard and a quizzical smile. I decided then that he was a really good man, an opinion I have not changed'.
