Russia - 1917 to 1940

as long as you are reading a historian and not, say, for example, Trotskiy, Kaganovich or Anna Larina you will be fine.

Khrushchev released his memoirs as well. Another thing you shouldn't read.

>>6331515
because historians are always objective.

>>6331515
>>6331515
Any tips?

>>6331496
darkness at noon

>>6331496
Ten Days that Shook the World

>>6331522
Moreso than revolutionaries.

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russian revolution and civil war from white perspective, bonus: occultism, asia and ungern-sternberg

>>6331496
The Great Purge Revisited and The Harvest of Sorrows (about the famine in the Ukraine) both by Robert Conquest. Also The Gulag Archepeligo. There are other historians, but these will get you started.

A History of Soviet Russia - E.H Carr
I'm a Trotskyist so I would recommended the History of the Russian Revolution.

Also Arthur Ransome has some cool journalistic stuff.

Stuff by Isaac Deutscher, maybe Lenin's Last Struggle Moshe Lewin.

>>6331531
ask on reddit's booksuggestions not on fucking lit.

>>6331496
Trotsky's History of the russian revolution.

>>6331496
The Mitrokhin Archive might be interesting.

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>>6331496

I recommend this bibliography.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/russian-revolution-bibliography-t120423/index.html

>>6331676
get outta here you scum

Anne Applebaum has some pretty great books on that period of Russian history. "Gulag" (about the Gulags naturally) won a Pulitzer and is one of the best history texts I've ever read. Iron Curtain deals more with Russia in general and is also great.

>>6331496
Pirani
Fitzpatrick
Andrle

>>6331515
Trotsky's military writings offer an interesting perspective to Civil War, showing his reckless fatalism and dramatic nature as opposed to the almost distant and cold man portrayed in Histories of the War.

The best general work on the civil war - or the one that I keep returning to whenever I want to check the broad details - is Ewan Mawdsley's Russian Civil War. It is a short, clear book with good annotations and unparalled expertise on the miltary affairs of the conflict. Focusing on Bolshevik/White conflict, its scope could be wider - narrative of foreign intervention, separatism and anarchist hijinks is missed here, but the military analysis he provides of White loss is unparalled here.

Of the anarchist histories and historians, stick to Volin. Makhno and Arshinov are good storytellers - they portray the spirit of anarchist movements well, but they are extremely political and openly hateful towards non-anarchists, which invalidates them as proper histories.

I don't know how much knowledge of the progress of RCW you have, but I recommend you to study it very well - the war was chaotic and bizarre, and various histories show it very differently, some saying that Bolsheviks had won already in 1918, some focusing on the latter years, some ignoring things like Czechoslovak rebellion etc. Understand the overall progress of war, and then start to dig into to the small details and fronts later.

If you have any questions about Makhno or Makhnovist movement, I'd be happy to help, having read all the available histories in English of the movement last summer. I haven't read primary evidence (I don't know Russian/Ukrainian), or the Bolshevik histories (which have not been translated), but I believe I have a fair grasp of them.

Darkness at Noon, whilst fictional, does a great job of explaining the great purge, and how Stalin was able to bring himself into power. Can't recommend it strongly enough, one of my favourite books of all time

>>6331515
This is precisely the type of people you SHOULD read. Someone who has personal connection to an event and movement, inner knowledge, understanding of its mechanics and theoretical layers.

The least thing you should do is follow the "ideological and personal detachment = objectivity!" mentality that anglo-americans historians like to use because it protects their careers and gives them a belief that their work is honest and groundbreaking and no one ever did this. They are not devoid of biases and political philosophies, these just happen to be orthodox and internalized in their cases. It's like wanting the church version of everything that happened during the middle ages.

>>6332233
Anne Applebaum is a lying shit journalist.

>>6333413
>"ideological and personal detachment = objectivity!" mentality that anglo-americans historians
Do bother to read EP Thompson's historiographical work against Althusser/Anderson.

>>6331540

These historians will read the revolutionaries, and the only difference is that they will use their writings to come to their own conclusions that happen to be in line with mainstream politics, modern values, the audience's sensibilities and the publisher's demands. No reason why you shouldn't start with the "insiders" and work your way backwards to modern historians.

>>6333424
Why?

>>6333453
You tend to get more insight into primary sources if you've read a decent couple of histories first. Largely because you won't need to self-frame the context from scratch.

>>6333480
Read her footnotes and bibliography. It is the first place you should look in a "history" to tell if it is only a "history" or actually a history.

>>6331531
Grover Furr

>>6333574
Grover is pushing a very strong Stalinist line up hill using attacks on other people's sources and overstatements. He does not advance either a seriously scholarly or historically materialist line, but rather a set of apologia. Read him to see where other people have fucked up, but do not believe his narrative without secondary and tertiary confirmation.

Two Hundred Years Together

>>6333690
(2nd tome)

>>6333426
>EP Thompson

my negro

"The Master and Margarita", by Bulgakov