• gammison [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    That list is really not very good. Some of it's okay like Nove but Webb's work is pretty universally regarded as not accurate, and neither is Pat Sloan's or Mick Costellos. If you want to know soviet history from the period, read modern works based on digging in the archives, like the work of Moishe Lewin or J Arch Getty,

      • gammison [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Yeah too often old works from the 30s to the 80s by activists or real historians given bad data get recommended as soviet history and they're just not. They're not written with information from party archives or from statistical data as it was not made available to them. Or they're based on not totally accurate data. For example Webb's writing was originally based on statistics provided by the soviet embassy in London. We know from archive data that these stats were wrong.

        Should also say regarding Getty that he's an exception to the pre archive opening work. His first book in 1985 was made possible due to the USSR giving him full access to the Stalin archives as by that time the soviet government really didn't care. His work post 1991 uses the general archives that were opened post collapse.

      • gammison [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbNy30GyxVU Here's a good talk on the development of the the early soviet union btw.