Tariq Ali provides a biography of Vladimir Lenin from a Trotskyist perspective. Ali introduces the work by describing the historical subjugation of Russian working-class, peasants, through a system of Autocratic Tsarist regime, the conservative Russian Orthodox Church, and the upper-class. Marxism and socialism had a decisive appeal for Russian dissidents, the underprivileged and revolutionaries. Prominent Russian socialist thought developed in the form of the Anarchism with Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, Tolstoyian Christianity, Russian Liberalism, and Marxist philosopher Plekhanov. Tariq broadens this image of Russian to the international appeal of Socialism and Marxism during this period of time, using the example of the historical popularity of socialism in The United States in the form of Eugene V. Debs and Emma Goldman.
