The Day After the Revolution

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Lenins originality and importance as a revolutionary leader is most often associated with the seizure of power in 1917. But, iek argues in his new study and collection of original texts, Lenins true greatness can be better grasped in the very last couple of years of his political life. Russia had survived foreign invasion, embargo and a terrifying civil war, as well as internal revolts such as at Kronstadt in 1921. But the new state was exhausted, isolated and disorientated in the face of the world revolution that seemed to be receding. New paths had to be sought, almost from scratch, for the Soviet state to survive and imagine some alternative route to the future. With his characteristic brio and provocative insight, iek suggests that Lenins courage as a thinker can be found in his willingness to face this reality of retreat lucidly and frontally.

Reviews

Praise for Slavoj iek:

The excitable fluency, ursine congeniality and gleeful readiness to provoke and offend all feed the sense of authentic spontaneity and energy that has made iek something like European philosophys punk icon, packing out auditoriums around the world.
Josh Cohen, New Statesman

Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than Slavoj iek, one of the worlds best-known public intellectuals.
John Gray, New York Review of Books

A gifted speakertumultuous, emphatic, directhe writes as he speaks.
Jonathan Re, Guardian

Like Socrates on steroids. Breathtakingly perceptive.
Terry Eagleton

Such passion, in a man whose work forms a shaky, cartoon rope-bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding enquiring minds around the world.
Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph

Author Bio

SLAVOJ IEK is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes and many more.