Victor Sebestyen

Victor Sebestyen (born 1956) is an historian of Russia, Communism and Lenin,[1] and Eastern Europe.

Lenin: The Man, The Dictator, and the Master of Terror

In his quest for power, he promised people anything and everything. He offered simple solutions to complex problems. He lied unashamedly. He identified a scapegoat he could later label 'enemies of the people'. He justified himself on the basis that winning meant everything: the ends justified the means. ... Lenin was the godfather of what commentators a century after his time call 'post-truth politics'.

Victor Sebestyen, Lenin: The Man, The Dictator, and the Master of Terror[2]

He built a system based on the idea that political terror against opponents was justified for a greater end. It was perfected by Stalin, but the ideas were Leninś. He had not always been a bad man, but he did terrible things. Angelica Balabanova, one of his old comrades who admired him for many years but grew to fear and loathe him, said perceptively that 'Lenin's tragedy was, in Goethe's phrase, he desired the good ... but created evil'.

Victor Sebestyen, Lenin: The Man, The Dictator, and the Master of Terror[2]

Selected Publications

  • Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Pantheon Books, 2006.
  • Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire. Hachette, 2009.[3]
  • 1946: The Making of the Modern World. Macmillan, 2014.
  • Sebestyen, Victor (2017). Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror. Pantheon Books. ISBN 9781101871638.[4][5]

Articles

See also

References

  1. "Red Giant - An Interview with Viktor Sebestyen", The Octavian Report, retrieved 3 January 2021
  2. Sebestyen 2017, Introduction, p. 3.
  3. "Revolution 1989", Kirkus, retrieved 3 January 2021
  4. Joffe, Josef (19 October 2017), "The First Totalitarian", The New York Times, retrieved 3 January 2021
  5. Larman, Alex (26 February 2017), "Lenin the Dictator by Victor Sebestyen review – the godfather of post-truth", The Guardian, retrieved 3 January 2021
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