No Less Than Mystic: A History of Lenin and the Russian Revolution for a 21st-Century Left

If you don’t already know the difference between a Bolshevik and a Menshevik, or how to distinguish between the Bund and the Duma, you will be lost before you get started with this in-depth political treatise. Medhurst, a Libertarian who has spent his lengthy career of Labor Union service in the UK, reveals that a century after the disastrous Bolshevik Revolution, Socialism the world over still pays for those mistakes. In a hard Right shift from the radical Left, Medhurst yanks the veneer of prestige off of Lenin and the rest of the Russian revolutionaries to show us how unchecked totalitarians hijacked genuine efforts at socialized democracy.

An autodidact from years of experience, Medhurst writes with cynical pedantry about political revolts today while comparing them to the events of the 1917 Revolution. For example, “The failure of the secular democratic revolutionaries of Tunisia and Egypt in 2010-2011 to translate their rebellion to a permanent hold on power is in contrast to the success of the Georgian Social Democrats after February 1917.”

Medhurst scores points with his practical insights, some of which drop-in so unexpectedly amid a historical narrative that the reader may get whiplash from the sudden jolt of current events.