/lit/ - Literature

>>20649258
IT absolutely has relationship to the book, and as a reader you cannot be divorced from the context in which you read. The reader himself has been studied in this exact manner. See Wayne Booth's concept of the implied reader from the early 1960s.

Why do people keep picking up Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky? Why Malthus? Because it makes them think about their current political situation and reminds one that your ideas are merely the product of generations of thinkers before you.

>>15035851
>Lenin by Lars Lih
Biography of Lenin which focuses on the historically-rooted emotional foundation for Lenin's politics. If you want to understand why the emotional roots of Bolshevism, this book is good.
>Prelude to Revolution, Bolsheviks Come to Power, and Bolsheviks in Power by Alexander Rabinowitch
Trilogy about the Russian Revolution. It's not necessary for understanding post-WWII era USSR, and is a deep dive, but the series is a must read for anyone that wants to understand 1917.
>Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Anti-communist novel about the Great Purge. Great for understanding the generational gap between the revolutionary and post-revolutionary generations, from the perspective of a disillusioned ex-Communist.
>Everyday Stalinism by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Deals with the experiences of everyday people in the 1930s Soviet Union under Stalin. Excellent social history that demythologizes Stalinism both ways.
>Soviet Union after Stalin edited by Stephen Cohen
>Dilemmas of De-Stalinization edited by Polly Jones
Selection of academic essays by respected scholars that deal with the history and historiography on the shift in state policy after the death of Stalin and his denunciation.
>Marxism, Wars and Revolutions by Isaac Deutscher
Not really about the Soviet Union per se, but a series of articles from a Trotskyist fellow traveler on the politics and ideology of the Eastern Bloc. In include it here if you want to understand how the Western intellectual Left viewed Stalinism, which I think is important to understanding the USSR as an international ideological phenomenon.

>>6413289
>mfw Stalinistic States have lasted more than any other kind of revolutionary state
HOXHA WAS RIGHT
Stalin did nothing wrong.

>implying being a Stalinist is bad
Zizek will free us all.

>>6161347
>2015
>not being a Stalinist Catholic
Revisionist heresy at its finest, folks

>>6132652
Not engaging in a full out war against the rest of the world to follow the dream of "permanent revolution"?

Uncle Stalin did nothing wrong.