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March 29, 2024, 12:38:21 PM

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marxist history

Started by chveik, November 17, 2021, 12:07:18 PM

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chveik

does anyone have a reading list of history books about the USSR/China/Cuba etc. written by people that aren't completely infected by cold war propaganda?

Herbert Ashe

Jonathan Spence's Search for Modern China could do the job for the PRC, it's roughly split 40/60 pre/post 1911 revolution.

Common undergraduate textbook for East Asian Studies (or it was 20 years), so on the slightly dry academic side rather than pop history; aspiring to politically neutral stance.

chveik

thanks.

i've done some digging since i started the thread and found everything i needed

Mister Six

For those who are interested, what's your reading list?

chveik

i will post it (and hopefully some reviews if i'm arsed) but i've downloaded way too many ebooks so i need to filter the interesting stuff out first

Mister Six

Haha, cheers! Look forward to seeing what you've found.

Bernice

Seconding my interest in this. Also on the lookout for a decent history of the Iranian revolution which isn't written by total cunts.

MoonDust

Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution by Alan Woods is a well researched and great account of the history of the Bolshevik party from the origins of Russian Marxism to 1917.

Unlike Stalinist accounts which portray the Bolshevik party as some super human force that went from strength to strength, it's honest in its account of the ups and downs of the party as well as some of the mistakes they made at various points.

MoonDust

I'm also waiting to read Russia: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution by Ted Grant, which traces the development of the USSR from a genuine worker's democracy after the revolution to the degeneration into the authoritarian bureaucracy in the late 1920s and the eventual restoration of capitalism in the 1990s.

chveik

i've read Mieville's October which is a great literary retelling of the revolution.


Theremin

Quote from: chveik on December 08, 2021, 09:35:25 PMi've read Mieville's October which is a great literary retelling of the revolution.

In this vein, can anyone recommend anything from Verso Books? They've got a massive sale this month.

Theremin

If you've not read them, the 'Age Of...' series by Eric Hobsbawm is essential.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=eric+hobsbawm+books

MoonDust

Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed is an excellent first hand account of the October Revolution.

For more in depth history of those events with historical background and great Marxist analysis of it, Leon Trotsky's three volume The History of the Russian Revolution cannot be recommended enough.

It's available in abridged form as one book (still a tome) but the three volume version is published by Wellred Books and that's worth a read.

Trotsky's writing style can be a bit difficult at times, but also surprisingly witty and funny. Especially the chapter analysing the personality and psychology of Tsar Nicholas.

MoonDust

The Revolution Betrayed is also good if you want an honest appraisal of how and why the world's first workers' democracy degenerated into the nightmare that was Stalinist Russia.

It was written in the 1930s and it was still not known how events would unfold, but Trotsky was clear that without political revolution in the USSR - by which he meant keeping the gains of the October revolution but overthrowing the bureaucracy with workers democracy of all levels of society - the USSR would eventually collapse and be overthrown by capitalism.

Proved right in 1991.