Originally published between 1926 and 1984, the 6 volumes in this set:

• Discuss the problems of Leninism and socialist construction, as well as the October Revolution and the relationship of the USSR and the West in the years following the First World War.

• Give an invaluable picture of what the Russian leader Joseph Stalin understood by Leninism.

• Provide illuminating study of the political thought and action of the Russian intelligentsia, in the decade up to and including the Revolution of 1905-6.

• Include the first biography of Lenin which tied together extensive material unearthed in WWII, explaining the complex personality and riddle of Lenin's seemingly impossible rise to power.

• Critique certain phases of revolutionary dictatorship in Russia.

• Reconsider the effect of Lenin on the politics and culture of the 20th Century.