To the Finland Station (New York Review Books Classics)

Edmund Wilson has suffered the same fate as the book, which is equally as curious. Of course, he was not as notorious as literary figure as one of his 20th century colleagues, H.L Mencken, who is still largely in print and in vogue, but Wilson so towers over all of his contemporaries that it is indeed mysterious that he has fallen into relative obscurity both as a writer and as a critic, as well. Yet Wilson was truly a renaissance figure, a gifted and talented poet, playwright, novelist, historian, and critical reviewer for a variety of magazines and periodicals such as the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic, a man able to articulate his position with regard to a plethora of social and political issues with great power and verve.

Yet it was in tomes such as this that he achieved his greatest powers of exposition, in this penetrating, quite detailed, and absorbing review of all the chief philosophical, political, social and economic elements of the chief architects of the Soviet revolution. Wilson had been a great student and admirer of the collected works of Karl Marx, and brought his immense intellectual and reporting skills to bear in describing the men, the ideas, and the issues of the so-called October revolution of 1918. It is the single best source of information regarding all of the various components of the massively important revolutionary process, neatly synthesizing the ways in which the various personalities, political circumstances, philosophical predispositions, and historical happenstance combined in the moist unlikely of revolutions in what Karl Marx considered one of the least likely of states, one so rural, so backward, and so vastly composed of uneducated ragged proletariat.

And in this stunning exploration we find new reason to understand and appreciate the power of individual personalities in the historical process, and the way that exceptional figures like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, and the ways in which various aspects of Marxist theory were used and abused in promulgating what would become Soviet socialism's dogmatic approach to creating a worker's paradise. As we thread our way through the particulars of Marxian theory Wilson is so intricately familiar with, we begin to understand his fascination with both Marx's genius and the subtleties of Marx's exposition. Too many of us forget how bastardized and vulgarized the versions of Marxism promulgated by Stalin were, and how much they worked against the inexorable truths Marx found ticking away in the universal time-clock he saw operating behind history's time.

So, too, is Wilson's examination of Lenin a wondrous thing to read through, with his thoughtful if perhaps too sympathetic explanations of Lenin's goals, motives, and frustrations in trying to set the revolution on course and on-mark with the needs of the modern socialist state he envisioned to grow from the original seizure of power. Unfortunately, he never lived to see the radical experiment through to its fruition, nor the fateful poisoning of the spirit of the revolution accomplished by Stalin in his paranoid and sociopathic manipulations and purges. This is an absolutely magnetic reading experience, one that will illustrate just how powerfully and how memorably a writer with extraordinary gifts and an incredible intellectual acumen can be. I highly recommend this book for anyone aspiring to a serious education about the events of the 20th century, of which the Soviet revolution of October 1918 is certainly an extraordinarily important part. Enjoy!


grand intellectual history of an idea for action   May 20, 2003
Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France)
32 out of 34 found this review helpful

This is the story of the journey of an idea - that of engineering a society conceived as an organism - from its roots in the romantic movement with Michelet to Lenin, the ultimate man of action, on the threshold of power. Only Edmund Wilson, whose erudition as an autodidact was unsurpassed in his time, could have pulled this off: the ideas and inspiration pulse with life on every page. You get to know Marx, ENgels, and scores of other characters intimately as they dream of building a socialist order that would fundamentally re-order society and its economy. WHile I was never a sympathiser for communism, this most certainly gave me a feeling for the seductive beauty of the dream. THere is even a forward by Wilson, who admits to being overly optimistic, that what he chronicled with such excitment actually led to "one of the most horrible tyrannies in the history of mankind." THis is intellectual history at its very best, freed in the hands of a master writer from the pedantry and puffery of academia, and unflinching in the audacity of its partisan interpretations. Also beautifully written, it is a window into the hopes and dream of the 20C.

Warmly recommended.


great historical work that reads like a novel   October 23, 1998
28 out of 31 found this review helpful

Wilsons examination of Lenin is valuable even though it's too sympathetic. This is because at the time he wrote it (1930's) he wasn't afforded the needed documentation of Lenins murderous misdeeds...Wilsons portrait of Marx however, is without peers. He makes you feel like you're a fly on the wall of Marx's smoke filled study. He makes you feel like you're a witness to history. He makes complicated philosophic and economic issues understandable for the layperson. He gives you a roadmap as to how modern socialist/utopian thought developed, he traces it back to its source and he does it in such a way as to make the reader feel like an explorer. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It saddens me to see that it's out of print. This book is far too important to be out of print.


One of the best written by the great Edmund Wilson.   November 6, 1998
26 out of 28 found this review helpful

Edmund Wilson has undeservingly fallen into obscurity, but in the 21st century I have no doubt that he'll be recognized as one of the greatest of writers in English, and especially important to understanding the 20th century.The title of his book, _To the Finland Station_ refers to Lenin's trip to Russia, financed by the German government. It is a history of religious and secular communalist movements in America, and surprisingly humorous. Starting from the early 1800's to the Communist Party of 1917, Wilson's elegant study remains ever relevant.


Omage for a Great Man of Letters   January 18, 2002
Tyler P. Harwell (New London, NH United States)
19 out of 22 found this review helpful

It has been twenty years since I read "To the Finland Station", a story of the rise of communist thinking, from its earliest beginnings to Lenin's triumphal return to St. Petersburg. I don't recall much of it, except this: it is the best work of history I have ever read.

Anyone who wants to know what it means to be a writer should read this book, regardless of his or her interest in the subject. As night follows from day, those who are interested should read it, as well. It is a perfect illustration for one who believes that how a story is told is ever as important as the story, itself, and who wants to study an example where both are exceptional.

The content will prove valuable to anyone concerned with modern world history.