How did the Bolsheviks see themselves? What grand narrative gave meaning to their revolutionary aspirations? The leading Western expert on Bolshevism, Lars T. Lih, answers these questions in the first-ever study of the Bolshevik outlook from Lenin to perestroika.

Sharply focused case studies allow individual leaders Lenin, Stalin, Bukharin, Trotsky, Zinoviev to come alive and speak in their own voices, with surprising results that challenge conventional narratives left and right. What Was Bolshevism? uses novels, plays, literary criticism, photographs, statues, poetry, history textbooks, songs, and film to paint an indispensable self-portrait of Soviet civilization.