Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

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Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#1

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 06:47

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Lenin for Beginners (Pantheon Documentary Comic Book)
Richard Appignanesi
March 12, 1979

Lenin is the key to understanding the Russian Revolution. His dream was the creation of the world's first Socialist state. It was a short-lived dream that became a nightmare when Stalin rose to absolute power in 1929. Lenin was the avant-garde revolutionary who adapted Marxist theory to the practical realities of a vast, complex and backward Russia. Is he chiefly to blame for opening the way to the totalitarian regime of Stalin? Readers will be able to judge for themselves. Lenin's career is depicted in this book from his obscure provincial origins to architect of the Bolshevik October Revolution, and his ideas, his genius for underground organization and strategies for agitation are explained. It is impossible to estimate the events in post-communist Russia and Eastern Europe today without some basic grasp of the Russian Revolution and Lenin's role in it. This book aims to make that history accessible and digestible.

PDF download at link: http://ge.tt/4vmCgvT/v/0

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#2

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 06:58

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The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931-1933
R. W. Davies, Stephen G. Wheatcroft
December 2003

Planned as a number of independent volumes, this work covers the years 1929-1937, the crucial period of the first two five-year plans. In these years the Soviet Union became a great industrial power, and the economic system took the form which, inits main features, it retained until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Agriculture was collectivised and the whole economy was subordinated to central state planningl the Stalinist political regime was consolidated a new social structure emerged. This was the first attempt of a major country to manage economic and social development by a comprehensive plan. The weaknesses which ultimately led to its failure may partly be traced back to the 1930s: the tendency to overinvestment and overtaut planning, the inability to innovate, and the frustration of the grandiose efforts to modernise agriculture. While the Soviet system ultimately failed, Soviet industrialisation was a crucial stage in spreading the economic and social transformation which began in England in the middle of the eighteenth century to the thousands of millions of peasants who lived on the borders of starvation in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The Series:
1 THE SOCIALIST OFFENSIVE: The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929-1930
2 THE SOVIET COLLECTIVE FARM, 1929-1930
3 THE SOVIET ECONOMY IN TURMOIL, 1929-1930
4 CRISIS AND PROGRESS IN THE SOVIET ECONOMY, 1931-1933
5 THE YEARS OF HUNGER: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 (With Stephen G. Wheatcroft)
6 GROWTH, PURGES AND THE THREAT OF WAR: The Soviet Economy, 1933-1937 (in preparation) (with Oleg V. Khlevnyuk and Stephen G. Wheatcroft)

PDF Version: http://www.busin.biz/library/soviet%20u ... -1933'.pdf

BOOK REVIEW

EH.NET

Popular media and most historians for decades have described the great famine that struck most of the USSR in the early 1930s as “man-made,” very often even a “genocide” that Stalin perpetrated intentionally against Ukrainians and sometimes other national groups to destroy them as nations. The most famous exposition of this view is the book Harvest of Sorrow, now almost two decades old, by the prolific (and problematic) historian Robert Conquest, but this perspective can be found in History Channel documentaries on Stalin, many textbooks of Soviet history, Western and even World Civilization, and many writings on Stalinism, on the history of famines, and on genocide.

This perspective, however, is wrong. The famine that took place was not limited to Ukraine or even to rural areas of the USSR, it was not fundamentally or exclusively man-made, and it was far from the intention of Stalin and others in the Soviet leadership to create such as disaster. A small but growing literature relying on new archival documents and a critical approach to other sources has shown the flaws in the “genocide” or “intentionalist” interpretation of the famine and has developed an alternative interpretation. The book under review, The Years of Hunger, by Robert Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft, is the latest and largest of these revisionist interpretations. It presents more evidence than any previous study documenting the intentions of Soviet leaders and the character of the agrarian and agricultural crises of these years.

More: http://eh.net/book_reviews/the-years-of ... 1931-1933/


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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#3

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 07:12

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Stalin and Stalinism
Alan Wood
Routledge; 2 edition
(2 Dec. 2004)

The second edition of a best-selling pamphlet, Stalin and Stalinism has been fully updated to take in new debates and controversies which have emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Considering the ways in which Stalin's legacy still affects attitudes in and towards post-Soviet Russia, Stalin and Stalinism examines Stalin's ambiguous personal and political legacy, his achievements, and his crimes - all now the subject of major reappraisal both in the West and in the former Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin's twenty-five-year dictatorship is without doubt one of the most controversial periods in the history of the Soviet Union, and it is brought to life here for all students of European history and politics.

PDF of the first few pages: http://samples.sainsburysebooks.co.uk/9 ... 534751.pdf

Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=ySaAA ... sm&f=false

I have this in PDF file. -- Haven

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#4

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 07:20

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The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24: Soviet Workers & the New Communist Elite
Simon Pirani

The Russian revolution of 1917 was a defining event of the twentieth century, and its achievements and failures remain controversial in the twenty-first. This book focuses on the retreat from the revolution’s aims in 1920–24, after the civil war and at the start of the New Economic Policy – and specifically, on the turbulent relationship between the working class and the Communist Party in those years. It is based on extensive original research of the actions and reactions of the party leadership and ranks, of dissidents and members of other parties, and of trade union activists and ordinary factory workers. It discusses working-class collective action before, during and after the crisis of 1921, when the Bolsheviks were confronted by the revolt at the Kronshtadt naval base and other protest movements.

This book argues that the working class was politically expropriated by the Bolshevik party, as democratic bodies such as soviets and factory committees were deprived of decision-making power; it examines how the new Soviet ruling class began to take shape. It shows how some worker activists concluded that the principles of 1917 had been betrayed, while others accepted a social contract, under which workers were assured of improvements in living standards in exchange for increased labour discipline and productivity, and a surrender of political power to the party.

PDF Copy: https://libcom.org/files/The%20Russian% ... etreat.pdf

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#5

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 07:26

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The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd
Alexander Rabinowitch
2007

A major contribution to the historiography of the world in the 20th century, The Bolsheviks in Power focuses on the fateful first year of Soviet rule in Petrograd. It examines events that profoundly shaped the Soviet political system that endured through most of the 20th century. Drawing largely from previously inaccessible Soviet archives, it demolishes standard interpretations of the origins of Soviet authoritarianism by demonstrating that the Soviet system evolved ad hoc as the Bolsheviks struggled to retain political power amid spiraling political, social, economic, and military crises. The book covers issues such as the rapid fall of influential moderate Bolsheviks, the formation of the dreaded Cheka, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the Red Terror, the national government's flight to Moscow, and the subsequent rivalry between Russia's new and old capitals.

Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=BEoBC ... ad&f=false

I own this in PDF form. -- Haven

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#6

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 07:33

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Russia's Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921-1929
Alan M. Ball
September 1990

In 1921 Lenin surprised foreign observers and many in his own Party, by calling for the legalization of private trade and manufacturing. Within a matter of months, this New Economic Policy (NEP) spawned many thousands of private entrepreneurs, dubbed Nepmen. After delineating this political background, Alan Ball turns his attention to the Nepmen themselves, examining where they came from, how they fared in competition with the socialist sector of the economy, their importance in the Soviet economy, and the consequences of their "liquidation" at the end of the 1920s.

E-Book: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpresseboo ... nd=ucpress

PDF Version: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/eBooks/ ... 20Ball.pdf

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#7

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 07:43

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Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin & Stalin
Victoria E. Bonnell
October 1999

Masters at visual propaganda, the Bolsheviks produced thousands of vivid and compelling posters after they seized power in October 1917. Intended for a semi-literate population that was accustomed to the rich visual legacy of the Russian autocracy and the Orthodox Church, political posters came to occupy a central place in the regime's effort to imprint itself on the hearts and minds of the people and to remold them into the new Soviet women and men.

In this first sociological study of Soviet political posters, Victoria Bonnell analyzes the shifts that took place in the images, messages, styles, and functions of political art from 1917 to 1953. Everyone who lived in Russia after the October revolution had some familiarity with stock images of the male worker, the great communist leaders, the collective farm woman, the capitalist, and others. These were the new icons' standardized images that depicted Bolshevik heroes and their adversaries in accordance with a fixed pattern. Like other "invented traditions" of the modern age, iconographic images in propaganda art were relentlessly repeated, bringing together Bolshevik ideology and traditional mythologies of pre-Revolutionary Russia.

Symbols and emblems featured in Soviet posters of the Civil War and the 1920s gave visual meaning to the Bolshevik worldview dominated by the concept of class. Beginning in the 1930s, visual propaganda became more prescriptive, providing models for the appearance, demeanor, and conduct of the new social types, both positive and negative. Political art also conveyed important messages about the sacred center of the regime which evolved during the 1930s from the celebration of the heroic proletariat to the deification of Stalin.

Treating propaganda images as part of a particular visual language, Bonnell shows how people "read" them—relying on their habits of seeing and interpreting folk, religious, commercial, and political art (both before and after 1917) as well as the fine art traditions of Russia and the West. Drawing on monumental sculpture and holiday displays as well as posters, the study traces the way Soviet propaganda art shaped the mentality of the Russian people (the legacy is present even today) and was itself shaped by popular attitudes and assumptions.

Iconography of Power includes posters dating from the final decades of the old regime to the death of Stalin, located by the author in Russian, American, and English libraries and archives. One hundred exceptionally striking posters are reproduced in the book, many of them never before published. Bonnell places these posters in a historical context and provides a provocative account of the evolution of the visual discourse on power in Soviet Russia.

PDF Copy: http://documenta_pdf.jmir.dyndns.org/V.E.Bonnell_IconographyofPower_1998.pdf

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#8

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 07:50

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Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy
Part of Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies
Israel Getzler
May 2002

This is the first major study of revolutionary Kronstadt to span the period from February 1917 to the uprising of March 1921. It focuses attention on Kronstadt's forgotten golden age, between March 1917 and July 1918, when Soviet power and democracy flourished there. Professor Getzler argues that the Kronstadters' 'Third Revolution' of March 1921 was a desperate attempt at a restoration of that Soviet democracy which they believed had been taken from them by Bolshevik 'commissarocracy'. Pointing to continuity in personnel, ideology and institutions linking the 1917–18 Kronstadt experiment in Soviet democracy with the March 1921 uprising, the author sees that continuity reflected in the Kronstadt tragedy's central figure, the long-haired, dreamy-eyed student Anatolii Lamanov. Chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet in 1917 and chief editor of its Izvestiia, Lamanov became the ideologist of the 1921 uprising and was soon after executed as a 'counter-revolutionary'.

PDF Version: https://libcom.org/files/Israel_Getzler ... __1983.pdf

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#9

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 08:00

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Western Marxism & the Soviet Union: A Survey of Critical Theories and Debates Since 1917
Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History and University of Amsterdam. Translated by Jurriaan Bendien

The ‘Russian Question’ was an absolutely central problem for Marxism in the twentieth century. Numerous attempts were made to understand the nature of Soviet society. The present book tries to portray the development of these theoretical contributions since 1917 in a coherent, comprehensive appraisal. It aims to present the development of the Western Marxist critique of the Soviet Union across a rather long period in history (from 1917 to the present) and in a large region (Western Europe and North America). Within this demarcation of limits in time and space, an effort has been made to ensure completeness, by paying attention to all Marxist analyses which in some way significantly deviated from or added to the older theories.

PDF Version: https://libcom.org/files/van_der_linden ... _union.pdf

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#10

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 08:10

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Stalin: A New History
Sarah Davies, University of Durham
James Harris, University of Leeds
January 2006

The recent declassification of a substantial portion of Stalin's archive has made possible this fundamental new assessment of the controversial Soviet leader. Leading international experts accordingly challenge many assumptions about Stalin from his early life in Georgia to the Cold War years--with contributions ranging across the political, economic, social, cultural, ideological and international history of the Stalin era. The volume provides a more profound understanding of Stalin's power and one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century.

*A revisionist history of Stalin and Stalinism based on recently declassified archive material, including Stalin's personal archive
*Features contributions by an international team of leading Russian historians
*Essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students studying Stalin and his regime

PDF Copy: http://busin.biz/library/soviet%20union ... story'.pdf
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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#11

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 08:16

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Paul R. Gregory
Cambridge University Press; 1 edition
(October 27, 2003)

Using formerly secret Soviet state and Communist Party archives to describe the Soviet administrative command system, this study concludes that the system failed not because of Stalin and later leaders, but because of the economic system. It pinpoints the reasons for failure such as poor planning, unreliable supplies, preferential treatment of indigenous enterprises as well as the basic principal-agent conflict between planners and producers, which created a sixty-year reform stalemate. Although the command system was the most significant human experiment of the twentieth century, its basic contradictions and inherent flaws would re-surface if it were to be repeated.

PDF Version: http://digamo.free.fr/stalpoleco.pdf

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#12

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 19:23

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The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism
Erik Van Ree
Routledge,
Aug 27, 2003

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the political thought of Joseph Stalin. Making full use of the documentation that has recently become available, including Stalin's private library with his handwritten margin notes, the book provides many insights on Stalin, and also on western and Russian Marxist intellectual traditions. Overall, the book argues that Stalin's political thought is not primarily indebted to the Russian autocratic tradition, but belongs to a tradition of revolutionary patriotism that stretches back through revolutionary Marxism to Jacobin thought in the French Revolution. It makes interesting comparisons between Stalin, Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky, and explains a great deal about the mindset of those brought up in the Stalinist era, and about the era's many key problems, including the industrial revolution from above, socialist cultural policy, Soviet treatment of nationalities, pre-war and Cold War foreign policy, and the purges.

PDF copy of book: http://down.cenet.org.cn/upfile/29/200953152918155.pdf

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#13

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 19:32

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Lenin: A Revolutionary Life
Routledge Historical Biographies
Christopher Read
2005

From a highly distinguished author on the subject, this biography is an excellent scholarly introduction to one of the key figures of the Russian Revolution and post-Tsarist Russia. Not only does it make use of archive material made newly available in the glasnost and post-Soviet eras, it re-examines traditional sources as well, providing an original interpretation of Lenin's life and historical importance.

Focal points of this study are:

*Lenin's revolutionary ascetic personality
*how he exploited culture, education and propaganda
*his relationship to Marxism
*his changing class analysis of Russia
*his 'populist' instincts.

A prominent figure at the forefront of debates on the Russian revolution, Read makes sure that Lenin remains in his place as a highly influential and significant figure of the recent past.

PDF Copy: http://sociology.sunimc.net/htmledit/up ... 140434.pdf

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#14

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 20:14

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Another view of Stalin
Ludo Martens
1994

The book is intended to directly confront the standard attacks made against Stalin: forced collectivization, overbearing bureaucracy, extermination of the Old Bolshevik guard, the Great Purge, forced industrialization, collusion between Stalin and Hitler, his incompetency during World War II, etc. We have endeavored to deconstruct many `well-known truths’ about Stalin, those that are summarized — over and over — in a few lines in newspapers, history books and interviews, and which have more or less become part of our unconscious. Read the book,then you decide.

Online Book: http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/

I own this entire book in PDF. -- Haven

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Re: Cultural, Historical & Socio-Economic Books on the Soviets

#15

Post by Haven » 08 Oct 2015, 22:06

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Well researched and detailed study of the factory-level impact of the Russian Revolution in Petrograd, dealing in particular with implementation of workers' control by the factory councils.

This book explores the impact of the 1917 Revolution on factory life
in the Russian capital. It traces the attempts of workers to take
control of their working lives from the February Revolution through
to June 1918, when the Bolsheviks nationalised industry. Although
not primarily concerned with the political developments of the
Revolution, the book demonstrates that the sphere of industrial
production was a crucial arena of political as well as economic
conflict.

Having discussed the structure and composition of the factory
workforce in Petrograd prior to 1917 and the wages and conditions
of workers under the old regime, Dr Smith shows how workers saw
the overthrow of the autocracy as a signal to democratise factory life
and to improve their lot. After examining the creation and activities
of the factory committees, he analyses the relationship of different
groups of workers to the new labour movement, and assesses the
extent to which it functioned democratically.

The central theme of the book is the factory committees'
implementation of workers' control of production. Dr Smith rejects
the standard Western interpretation of this movement as
'syndicalist', showing that its ideological perspectives were close to,
but not identical with, those of the official Bolshevik party.
Essentially, workers' control was a practical attempt to maintain
production and to preserve jobs in a situation of deepening economic
chaos. On coining to power in October, the Bolsheviks envisaged an
expansion of workers' control, and the committees pressed for
nationalisation and workers' management. The collapse of industry
and the reluctance of employers to continue their operations,
however, convinced the Bolshevik leadership that workers' control
was inadequate as a means of restoring order in the economy, and
they subordinated the committees to the trade unions in 1918.
Dr Smith assesses the extent to which the Bolsheviks' capacity to
carry out a genuinely revolutionary programme was limited by their
own ideology or by the economic and social conditions in which the
revolution was born. Throughout, he places the struggle in the
factories in the context of an international and comparative
perspective. The book will thus appeal not only to historians of
Russia and the Russian Revolution, but also to students of labour
history and of revolutionary theory.

S.A. SMITH is Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex. He
studied at the Universities of Oxford, Birmingham, Moscow and
Beijing.

PDF FILE: https://libcom.org/files/Red_Petrograd_ ... 7-1918.pdf

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