This book asks three fundamental questions about the socialist experiment in twentieth-century Russia: How did Marxist ideas come to be implemented in Russia, a country entirely unsuited to them? Why did the experiment lead to such suffering and upheaval and prove so fruitless? And why did the attempt to return to a proper Marxism/Leninism bring about the rapid collapse of the experiment. In its answers, this book pays special attention to the shadow cast by Lenin throughout the entire Soviet era.