In Defense of Marxism: The Social & Political Contradictions of the Soviet Union


Leon Trotsky - 1942
    Cannon 9/12/39The USSR in War 9/25/39to Sherman Stanley 10/8/39Again & Once More Again on the Nature of the USSR 10/18/39The Referendum & Democratic Centralism 10/21/39to Sherman Stanley 10/22/39to James P. Cannon 10/28/39to Max Shachtman 11/6/39to James P. Cannon 12/15/39A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the SWP 12/15/39to John G. Wright 12/19/39to Max Shachtman 12/20/39to Nat'l Comm. Majority 12/26+27/39, 1/3+4/40to Joseph Hansen 1/5/40Open Letter to Cde Burnham 1/7/40to James P. Cannon 1/9/40to Farrell Dobbs 1/10/40to John G. Wright 1/13/40to James P. Cannon 1/16/40to Wm F. Warde 1/16/40to Joseph Hansen 1/18/40From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene 1/24/40 to Martin Abern 1/29/40to Albert Goldman 2/10+19/40Back to the Party 2/21/40Science & Style 2/23/40to James P. Cannon 2/27/40to Joseph Hansen 2/29/40to Farrell Dobbs 3/4, 4/4+16/40Petty-Bourgeois Moralists & the Proletarian Party 4/23/40Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events 4/25/40to James P. Cannon 5/28/40to Albert Goldman 6/5/40On the Workers Party 8/7/40to Albert Goldman 8/9/40to Chris Andrews 8/17/40

Russian Thinkers


Isaiah Berlin - 1978
    The Birth of the Russian IntelligentsiaII. German Romanticism in Petersburg and MoscowIII. Vissarion BelinskyIV. Alexander Herzen- Russian Populism- Tolstoy and Enlightenment- Fathers and ChildrenIndex

Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s


Sheila Fitzpatrick - 1999
    Focusing on the urban population, Fitzpatrick depicts a world of privation, overcrowding, endless lines, and broken homes, in which the regime's promises of future socialist abundance rang hollowly. We read of a government bureaucracy that often turned life into a nightmare, and of how ordinary citizens tried to circumvent it. We also read of the secret police, whose constant surveillance was endemic at this time, and the waves of terror, like the Great Purges of 1937, which periodically cast society into turmoil.

Czars: Russia's rulers for over one thousand years


James P. Duffy - 1995
    Wracked by boundary disputes, political intrigue, myriad wars and shifting centers of power, Russia was maintained throughout by a ruling elite as diverse as the lands they governed. The story of these rulers, told wit clarity and style in Czars, is in many ways the story of Russia itself.From the birth of the Kievan state in the second half of the ninth century under the Varangian Oleg to the murder of Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1918, authors Duffy and Ricci trace the long and twisted line of czarist rule in Russia, offering many insights on the uses and abuses of absolute power, as well as a glimpse at world history through the eyes of those who made it.Key players includes: Saint Olga, appointed regent in 945, and the first of several strong czarinas Ivan I, prince of Moscovy 1328-1341, who centralized power in Moscow Boris Godunov, Fedor II, Dmitri the Impostor, Basil IV, Dmitri and Ladislaus of Poland, the six czars who ruled, sometimes simultaneously, during the aptly named Time of Troubles, 1598-1612 Peter the Great, perhaps Russia's most progressive ruler Catherine the Great, who led a successful revolt against her husband, Czar Peter III, to become the fourth woman monarch of Russia Seventeen portraits of czars through the ages, several historical maps, genealogical charts, a thorough bibliography and a detailed index bring the reader as close to Russia's erstwhile monarchy as one would want to get. Ideal for students, historians and general readers from serf to sovereign, Czars is a vital new page in the literature of Russian history.

Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East


Stephen G. Fritz - 2011
    Adolf Hitler believed this surprise attack was crucial for German success in World War II. It aimed to destroy what Hitler perceived as a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy and to ensure German economic, political and cultural prosperity. A huge percentage of German resources were allocated to the campaign against the Soviet Union, and the total percen

Red Plenty


Francis Spufford - 2007
    It was built on the twentieth-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950's, the magic seemed to be working.Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan, and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, it give the tyranny its happy ending. It's history, it's fiction. It's a comedy of ideas, and a novel about the cost of ideas.By award-winning (and famously unpredictable) author of The Child That Books Built and Backroom Boys, Red Plenty is as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant - and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire


David Remnick - 1993
    "A moving illumination . . . Remnick is the witness for us all." —Wall Street Journal.

A People's History of the Russian Revolution


Neil Faulkner - 2017
    In A People's History of the Russian Revolution, Neil Faulkner sets out to debunk the myths and pry fact from fiction, putting at the heart of the story the Russian people who are the true heroes of this tumultuous tale. In this fast-paced introduction, Faulkner tells the powerful narrative of how millions of people came together in a mass movement, organized democratic assemblies, mobilized for militant action, and overturned a vast regime of landlords, profiteers, and warmongers.   Faulkner rejects caricatures of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as authoritarian conspirators or the progenitors of Stalinist dictatorship, and forcefully argues that the Russian Revolution was an explosion of democracy and creativity—and that it was crushed by bloody counter-revolution and replaced with a form of bureaucratic state-capitalism.   Grounded by powerful first-hand testimony, this history marks the centenary of the Revolution by restoring the democratic essence of the revolution, offering a perfect primer for the modern reader.

Lenin the Dictator


Victor Sebestyen - 2017
    In Russia to this day Lenin inspires adulation. Everywhere, he continues to fascinate as a man who made history, and who created a new kind of state that would later be imitated by nearly half the countries in the world.Lenin believed that the 'the political is the personal', and while in no way ignoring his political life, Sebestyen focuses on Lenin the man - a man who loved nature almost as much as he loved making revolution, and whose closest ties and friendships were with women. The long-suppressed story of his ménage a trois with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and his mistress and comrade, Inessa Armand, reveals a different character to the coldly one-dimensional figure of legend.Told through the prism of Lenin's key relationships, Sebestyen's lively biography casts a new light on the Russian Revolution, one of the great turning points of modern history.

Russia at War: 1941-1945


Alexander Werth - 1964
    Himself an eyewitness to the shattering historical drama he vividly records, Werth offers an intensely detailed chronicle of the events that exceeded in savagery and hatred any other on Russian soil. From the hardships of the citizenry to the sweep of massive military operations to the corridors of diplomacy, this modern classic captures every aspect of the grim but heroic Soviet-German war that turned Russia into the most powerful nation in the Old World.

1917: Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, and the Year that Created the Modern Age


Arthur Herman - 2017
    Though they were men of very different backgrounds and experiences, Herman reveals how Wilson and Lenin were very much alike. Both rose to supreme power, one through a democratic election; the other through violent revolution. Both transformed their countries by the policies they implemented, and the crucial decisions they made. Woodrow Wilson, a champion of democracy, capitalism, and the international order, steered America's involvement in World War I. Lenin, a communist revolutionary and advocate for the proletariat, lead the Bolsheviks' overthrow of Russia's earlier democratic revolution that toppled the Czar, and the establishment of a totalitarian Soviet Union.Men of opposing ideals and actions, each was idolized by millions-and vilified and feared by millions more. Though they would never meet, these two world leaders came to see in the other the evils of the world each sought to eradicate. In so doing, both would unleash the forces that still dominate our world, and that continue to shape its future from nationalism and Communism to today's maps of the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe. In this incisive, fast-paced history, Herman brilliantly explores the birth of a potent rivalry between two men who rewrote the rules of geopolitics-and the moment, one hundred years ago, when our contemporary world began.

A History of the Middle Ages


Crane Brinton - 2007
    You'll spend a week on this for sure.A History of the Middle Ages is the amazing story of European man in transition. It is a dramatic chronicle of 1,000 years of political, social, and economic transformation beginning with the dissolution of the classical Mediterranean civilization and ending with the first flowering of the Renaissance. It is also the story of two new religions, Christianity and Islam, both of which were destined to dominate the mind of every person in those new civilizations arising in their wake. This was the great Age of Faith, a time of darkness and a time of enlightenment...a time of lords and vassals, popes and kings, and commerce and cathedrals.Size of Audible Audio Book: 1146 minutes in 3 partsPart 1: 6 hr 15 minPart 2: 6 hr 29 minPart 3: 6 hr 22 min

Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia


Martin Malia - 1994
    He has written the history of a utopian illusion and the tragic consequences it had for the people of the Soviet Union and the world." -- David Remnick, The New York Review of Books "In Martin Malia, the Soviet Union had one of its most acute observers. With this book, it may well have found the cornerstone of its history." -- Francois Furet, author of Interpreting the French Revolution "The Soviet Tragedy offers the most thorough scholarly analysis of the Communist phenomenon that we are likely to get for a long while to come...Malia states that his narrative is intended 'to substantiate the basic argument,' and this is certainly an argumentative book, which drives its thesis home with hammer blows. On this breathtaking journey, Malia is a witty and often brilliantly penetrating guide. He has much wisdom to impart." -- The Times Literary Supplement "This is history at the high level, well deployed factually, but particularly worthwhile in the philosophical and political context -- at once a view and an overview." -- The Washington Post

Gulag: A History


Anne Applebaum - 2003
    In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost. Applebaum intimately re-creates what life was like in the camps and links them to the larger history of the Soviet Union. Immediately recognized as a landmark and long-overdue work of scholarship, Gulag is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history of the twentieth century.

Mountain of the Dead: The Dyatlov Pass Incident


Keith McCloskey - 2013
    While one of the skiers fell ill and returned, the remaining nine lost their way and ended up on another mountain slope known as Kholat Syakhl (or 'Mountain of the Dead').On the night of 1 February, something or someone caused the skiers to flee their tent in such terror that they used knives to slash their way out. Search parties were sent out and their bodies were found, some with massive internal injuries but no external marks on them. The autopsy stated the violent injuries were caused by 'an unknown elemental force'. The area was sealed off for years by the authorities and the full events of that night remained unexplained.Using original research carried out in Russia and photographs from the skiers' cameras, Keith McCloskey attempts to explain what happened to the nine young people who lost their lives in the mysterious 'Dyatlov Pass Incident'.