V.I. Lenin's What Is to Be Done? has long been seen as the founding document of twentieth-century revolutionaries, revealing Lenin's elitist and manipulative attitude toward workers. In this new translation, with extensive commentary, Lars T. Lih uses hitherto unavailable contextual information to fundamentally challenge this reading.

Lars T. Lih is the editor of Stalin's Letters to Molotov and the author of Bread and Authority in Russia, 19141921. He has taught political science at Wellesley College and currently teaches at the McGill School of Music in Montréal.