Lenin's Brain

When the once-secret Soviet state and party archives were opened in the early 1990s, Western scholars were able to gain new insight into the inner workings of the Soviet Union. Paul Gregory reported on the contents of these archives, including the story of a state-sponsored scientific study of Lenin’s brain, conducted in order to prove his genius, in Lenin’s Brain (Hoover Institution Press). He also wrote about Stalin’s criminal justice system, in which the theft of state property was punished much more severely than the theft of private property, and about the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, saying that the invasion was ordered by aging Politburo leaders who would not live to deal with the invasion’s consequences. Mr. Gregory recounted stories from his book and responded to questions from the audience at the Hoover Institution.

Paul Gregory is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also an economics professor at the University of Houston and a research professor close