David Shub

David Shub was a social democrat arrested for activity in the 1905 Russian revolution and exiled to Siberia in 1906, and escaped to the United States in 1908 where he remained in close contact with leading figures of the Russian Revolutionary movement, including Bolsheviks Lenin, Trotsky, and Bukharin, and also liberals and socialists such as Kerensky, Miliukov, Chernov, Catherine Breshkovsky, and others.[1]

In 1930 he wrote the lead article on Stalin, probably the first authoritative profile to appear in the American press,[1] for the New York Times magazine (22 March 1930)

His biography of Lenin has been reprinted over sixteen times, described as "indispensable to the student of contemporary history, of russia, and of social revolution".[2]

Biography

David Shub was born and educated in Russia. In 1904-1905 he lived in London, Paris, and Geneva, where he often met with leaders of the Social Democratic Party, both Menshevik and Bolshevik, including Lenin, Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Bonch-Bruyevich, Martov, Potresov, and Dan.[1]

Essentials of Leninism

As an appendix to his biography, Shub compiled a distillation of Leninist ideology in Lenin's own words.

Dictatorship and Soviet Democracy

Capitalism cannot be defeated and eradicated without the ruthless suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, who cannot at once be deprived of their wealth, of their superiority of organization and knowledge, and consequently for a fairly long period will inevitably try to overthrow the hateful rule of the poor; secondly, a great revolution, and a socialist revolution in particular, ev if there were no external war, is inconceivable without internal war, i.e. civil war, which is even more destructive than external war, and implies thousands and millions of cases of wavering and desertion from one side to another, implies a state of extreme indefiniteness, lack of equilibrium and chaos...

— Lenin, Izbrannyie Proizvedeniya, Selected Works, Russian, Vol. 2, pp.277-78

Selected publications
  • Shub, David (1948). Donald Porter Geddes (ed.). Lenin: A Biography (16 ed.). New York: Mentor Books.
  • Shub, David (1966). Lenin: A Biography (revised ed.). London: Pelican.
  • Lenin, Vladimir (1948). "Appendix: Essentials of Leninism". Lenin: A Biography. By Shub, David (revised ed.). New York: Mentor Books.

Bibliography

References
  1. Gibson 1948, Editor's Note.
  2. Shub 1948, NYT Book Review quoted on the back flap.
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