The Russian Revolution: A New History

A proliferation of documentaries has been released in the centennial year marking the end of the Romanov Dynasty. Among the very best of these is McKeekin’s latest work. Based on newly discovered evidence, Lenin was in fact a German plant, well financed and sent by the Wilhelm regime to infiltrate and wreak havoc upon the internal operations of the Tzar’s armed forces on the Eastern front during the critical period when America’s entry into the conflict beefed up action on the Western front. It worked a little too well.

McKeekin describes Lenin’s plot to transform Russia’s engagement in the Great War into its own civil war in order to transfer power from the existing government to himself, using German money to create the propaganda machinery necessary to turn the tide of public opinion. “After Lenin’s arrival, the Bolsheviks purchased a private printing press on Suvorovsky Prospekt for 250,000 rubles (equal to $125,000 then or some $12.5 million today)…”

Had Germany not lost the war when they did, Lenin very likely would not have survived once the Wilhelm objectives were accomplished, a point McKeekin makes abundantly clear through a collection of recently recovered documents. His conclusion gives us ample reason to learn the hard lessons of history: “[T]he sad fact about Leninism is that once invented, it cannot be uninvented.”