Book of the Week: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Vladimir Mayakovsky's Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is a 3,000 line epic poem which provides an extraordinary record of the utopian excitement of the early revolutionary years – as well a warning that Lenin should not become an icon.

Written immediately after Lenin's death in 1924, it proudly and passionately sets the story of the Bolshevik leader’s life against the history of capitalism and the trajectory of Soviet communism.

After initially appearing in Soviet newspapers, it became Mayakovsky's most celebrated work, with a public reading at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1930 receiving a 20 minute standing ovation. Out of print in English for over thirty years, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin remains relatively unknown in the west, but based on Dorian Rottenberg’s 1967 translation, Rosy Carrick’s new bi-lingual edition of the poem firmly re-establishes Mayakovsky’s reputation as one the most important political poets of the twentieth century.

You can buy Vladimir Ilyich Lenin here