I would have just added a comment under the current weeks general thread. If it weren't for the fact that I really like the book and REALLY think you should read it.
Strong writes in a way that is easy to read. And, as she has done before, she writes about the successes of the Soviet Union and Socialism. My liberal brain-worms were writhing, chapter by chapter they could not accept what was written, too good to be true, propaganda! Though I must have gotten very happy reading about these success, because I at one point got teary-eyed.
quote from where it boiled over.
When a winter childbirth in a distant Arctic station developed complications, the neighbors got the Dixon Island surgeon on the radio and for more than three hours he directed over the air every detail while the whole of a much-worried Arctic listened in. When the child and mother were safe, congratulations poured in from thousands of miles of icebound waterfront.
Please read it, not because I made an epub (although yea, also that), but because I think it's a great book.
Download my EPUB version: https://comlib.encryptionin.space (or https://archive.org/details/this-soviet-world-anna-louise-strong)
yooooo I love this book! So much so I scanned it as a PDF and uploaded it to libgen hahaha. Having an EPUB is sick too!
But yeah, this book made me feel so many different emotions, I had to put it down nearly every chapter. So much joy, awe, and inspiration, contrasted with so much anger and sadness that we (the west) destroyed this beautiful project. Strong is such an approachable writer and I appreciate her perspective a lot. This book really opened my eyes.
One of her other books (although it's not that long) The Stalin Era is also really good, and interesting as a historical perspective. She wrote it in the aftermath of the Secret
ReportSpeech, and while most of that is debunked now, it's interesting to see how pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin people dealt with the "revelations" at the time. Hahahah I could go on and on and on, but again, thank you for doing this and spreading the word of this book. It's absolutely one of my favorites!OMG! That's the source PDF for the EPUB!
What's the Secret Report and what debunked it? Is this like a translation thing with what in English is usually called Khrushchev's "Secret Speech"?
Yes it's the "secret speech". It has been debunked by several people but my favorite is Domenico Losurdo's "stalin the history and critique of a black legend". It is a very unique book, it only uses anti-communists sources to contradict the narratives lol.
lmao it's less a translation thing and more of an "exams week has me exhausted" thing. Thanks for the catch!