Does anyone know of any good books on the Soviet Union?
I read most of this one not too long ago. It mainly deals with the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath, and it's written from a Marxist perspective, but that's actually why I read it.
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What in particular are you interested in: The Revolution and Civil War, the Purges and Crash Industrialization, the Second World War, the Krushchev Era, etc etc? Or do you mean a full-on comprehensive book, like a textbook of the 20thC in the former Soviet Union?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton
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Damn Jargon yyou beat me to it.
Sutton has a significant three volume history of Soviet technological development. Brzezinski quotes him in some of his books because Sutton points out the U.S. banking connections to industrial and technological advancement in the USSR. Sutton has one on Nazi Germany as well. Both of those regimes were students of Western Banking. Brzezinski even goes so far as to say that most academics ignore Sutton because of the uneasiness of his conclusions.
The Global Cold War - I used this in two of my classes last semseter. It discusses the foreign policy choices of the U.S. and Russia. It also has valuable insights into the thrid world interactions with the Soviets. You'd not believe the reasoning for the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
I'm pleased that there are more people who know about him. As the man himself said, "History will have to be rewritten."
Although not directly about Soviet Russia, ''Young Stallin'' and ''Stalin: The court of the Red Tsar,'' both by Simon Sebag Montefiore, are very good books and follow the life of Stalin from when he was born to his death. It turns out that he was just a big a douchebag in his personal life as he was in public life.
'' The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.'' Stephen Hawking
Sutton's work looks interesting, especially the trilogy on technological development, but quite hard to find for a decent price.
What about Richard Pipes?
I met and had dinner with Richard Pipes at a Peace Conference in Ohio--great guy. His books are must-reads for any specialists and, even if you're not, he writes very well. He was a frequent target of Revisionist and Post-Revisionist historians of the Soviet Union, who charged him with being an orthodox war-mongering cold warrior, but that's little more than a caricature. He was simply an inveterate opponent of Socialism because of what he believed it must lead to: the destruction of property, people, and civilization.
As for the Sutton trilogy, you can donwload the trilogy online in PDF format. I snagged them a few months ago for my library. Shouldn't be too difficult to find with a bit of google-fu.
As for my pick: Pavel Polian's "Against their Will: the History and Geography of Forced MIgrations in the USSR". It isn't as easy to read as any of Pipes' stuff, but you have to admire this historian's systematic effort to exhasutively identify every "forced migration" (aka: ethnic cleansing) during the Stalin period. Anne Applebaum's "the GULag" is a pretty great read, and well documented, if not a very large book. Finally Odom's "The Collapse of the Soviet Military" is quite a good account of the foundation, development and collapse of the Soviet power structure which, he argues, was at root a military structure.
NEPHiLiX: I met and had dinner with Richard Pipes at a Peace Conference in Ohio--great guy. His books are must-reads for any specialists and, even if you're not, he writes very well. He was a frequent target of Revisionist and Post-Revisionist historians of the Soviet Union, who charged him with being an orthodox war-mongering cold warrior, but that's little more than a caricature. He was simply an inveterate opponent of Socialism because of what he believed it must lead to: the destruction of property, people, and civilization. As for the Sutton trilogy, you can donwload the trilogy online in PDF format. I snagged them a few months ago for my library. Shouldn't be too difficult to find with a bit of google-fu. As for my pick: Pavel Polian's "Against their Will: the History and Geography of Forced MIgrations in the USSR". It isn't as easy to read as any of Pipes' stuff, but you have to admire this historian's systematic effort to exhasutively identify every "forced migration" (aka: ethnic cleansing) during the Stalin period. Anne Applebaum's "the GULag" is a pretty great read, and well documented, if not a very large book. Finally Odom's "The Collapse of the Soviet Military" is quite a good account of the foundation, development and collapse of the Soviet power structure which, he argues, was at root a military structure.
Great, a shortage of reading material will not be a problem for a while, that's for sure. Thanks the help, everyone.
Here's some notes I took on Sutton's Bolshevik Revolution and Wallstreet (just a taste of Sutton's journalistic skills):
Yes, I know. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939: A superb look at the complex issue of Soviet nationalities policy. Well-writen, was a real page-turner for me. Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia: As the title says it's a comparitive look at Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union. It may seem a little basic at times, but there is also very good insight and information in there. Roger R. Reese, Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army, 1925-1941: Contributed a great deal of new understanding as to the causes of the Soviet military catastrophy in 1941 and did away with many of the old myths, including myths favorable for the reputation of the Red Army. Roger R. Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought :The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II: More narrow in scope than Reluctant Soldiers, dealing with a question that stil puzzles many though it really no longer should. From the pre-eminent social historian of the Red Army in the West. David M. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War: A good companion to Reluctant Soldiers. Helps understand the reasons for the military catastrophy in 1941. From the pre-eminent Western historian of Soviet military operations on the Eastern Front. David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler: If you are only ever going to read one book on the Soviet military at war it should be this one. A readable overview. R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933: As of yet, an unsurpased treatment of the requsition famine in the Soviet Union. Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements: On relationship between the state/party and the peasanty inside the Soviet Union reminiscent of colonial relations, and on the Soviet state crime that was perhaps the most 'Soviet' of them all — (unlike the Gulag, etc) never officially condemned for the duration of the Soviet Union's existence. Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000: Short, but powerful, orginal and obviously right. Does away with the romantic myth it was "civil society" and what not that brought down Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Shows it was really an internal crisis of confidence inside the party behind it, with rather unimportant contributed from 'the people'. Lenore A. Grenoble, Language Policy in the Soviet Union: Nothing revolutionary but good information if the topic interests you. J. Otto Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949: Again nothing terribly insightful but good for raw information. Geoffrey Hosking: Rulers and Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union, as of yet unread, but seems a promising look at the topic of Soviet nationalities politics. A bit more from my to-read list: Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland, was impressed with an interview with the author I heard so probably good. Zvi Y. Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present: was impressed with a few lectures I heard via Itunes by the author, so anxious to read something of his. Yitzhak M. Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953-1991: comes with a really interesting premise, so will have to read seeing it deals with my pet-most topic of nationalities policies in the Soviet Union. Some of these can be found online in pdf form, so if you're able to read from a screen you can look for them, or drop me a line and I can send or upload them from my computer and spare you the effort.
I'd say the opening of the archives proved the Revisionists to be largely right and the Cold Warriors to be largely wrong. In my opinion R.W. Davies, Wheatcroft >>> Conquest, Pipes. In fact here is a bit of the debate between them, so everyone may judge for themselves: http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ (It's a depository of over a dozen essays from history journals for Soviet specialists.)
Also you may look here for further suggestions: http://newbooksinrussianstudies.com/list/ After listening to an interview from an author you should be able to tell if their book interests you. And for anyone who may be interested, a joint blog by Russian specialists: http://russianhistoryblog.org/ It's a little dry as of yet even for my taste, but worth keeping an eye on.
Marko:I'd say the opening of the archives proved the Revisionists to be largely right and the Cold Warriors to be largely wrong.
Interesting, I'd have called it the other way. Don't get me wrong, I like both Davies and Wheatcroft very much, but Wheatcroft isn't a Revisionist, he's a post-Revisionist and, on top of that, there's only a tiny topic overlap between these three writers in particular. Pipes never tended to move much beyond the mid-1920s while the others tended to focus on, at the earliest, the late 1920s.
In any case, to be more clear on Pipes, I wasn't defending him on the grounds of his historiographical school, but rather on the grounds of his opposition to socialism (in regards to his works). Like Mises, he saw nothing but savagery and destruction hard-wired into the operation of the socialist/bolshevik program, period. To be sure, he allowed this conclusion to decide how he selected and interpreted archival and other source materials in the writing of his works. I still have a problem with this. However, after reading Mises and Rothbard I felt like I understood what was motivating his interpretive modus operandi. I didn't agree fully with his method, but I understood and was convinced more of his findings.
As to the who-won findings: there are really no Orthodox or Revisionist schools anymore--the post-Revisionists seemed to have basically synthesized both. However, judging from the characteristic approaches and findings more or less typical of the post-Revs, I'd argue that the Revisionists have more strongly affected the context and approach of the current historiography (this historiographical battle was very much a war between the old political history (Orthodox) versus the rising popularity of neglected social history (Revisionism)) while the Orthodox school more strongly affected its shape and content.
Great link, btw (the sovietinfo.tripod). There are so many relevant works missing from the list though...I wonder why they narrowed it to these? EDIT: NVM, figured out what I had missed on my first run-through of the list.