FROM MIRAGE TO TRAGEDY. BRITISH LENINIANA: FROM BERTRAN RUSSELL AND H. WELLS, P. TRAVERS, W.H. AUDEN TO R. CONQUEST, R. SERVICE, S. SEBAG-MONTEFIORE, C. MERRIDALE

The subject of this interdisciplinary article is a literary, journalistic and historiographic tradition of Lenin’s perception in Great Britain since early 1920-s up to our time. The main trajectory of this tradition is seen as a movement from myth, impressions, illusions of B. Russell, H. Wells, Gareth Jones, poets W.H. Auden and Hugh MacDiarmid to the revelations of Pamela Travers, Malcolm Muggeridge and later - to contemporary historians and writers Robert Conquest, Robert Service, Orlando Figes, Helen Rappaport, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Catherine Merridale, who base their works on archival research and explore the ambivalent phenomenon of Lenin’s personality: his rationalism, coldness, ruthlessness, cynicism, focus on theory, lack of interest in life, power hunger and propensity to repressions. British scholars convincingly show that this outstanding politician negatively influenced the course of history, he did incredible harm to Russia, which, in their opinion, he didn’t like. And he ended tragically like the majority of dictators: the revolution he spawned consumed him - being ill, he was isolated by his “successor” Stalin in a country house Gorky near Moscow. And then, against his will, he was not interred in Volkovo cemetery, next to his mother, but was doomed, like a vampire, to “eternal immortality” and the remains of his body are still tortured by regular mummification.