Download or read book Lenin's Private War written by Lesley Chamberlain and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2007-08-07 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1922, Lenin personally drew up a list of some 160 ‘undesirable' intellectuals – mostly philosophers, academics, scientists and journalists – to be deported from the new Soviet State. ‘We're going to cleanse Russia once and for all' he wrote to Stalin, whose job it was to oversee the deportation. Two ships sailed from Petrograd that autumn, taking Old Russia's eminent men and their families away to what would become permanent exile in Berlin, Prague and Paris. Lesley Chamberlain creates a rich portrait of this chilling historical moment, evoked with immediacy through the journals, letters, and memoirs of the exiles.