I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.
And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.
This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.
Kotkin is okay. I say with an eye roll.
At least his first book is. I am too often miffed at how he bemoans the fates of the Whites or lionizes the antisemitic scum who were leadership figures of the whites while playing “those evil commies” bits here and there. But he’ll at least say through grit teeth that the whites did at least (although reality is that they did worse that) as terrible shit as the Reds were forced to do under war communism.
His portrayal of Stalin and the Bolsheviks is unflattering but more faithful to reality than what you’d read from other bourgeoise historians in the same field. There’s always minor details here and there that’re in contention to whether or not it happened such as whether or not young Ioseb was actually “beaten like a dog by his father” or received what would be a normal amount of corporeal punishment from one’s parents at the time and place. Of course there’s the other claims of portrayal done by other writers who’ve made it their goal to make young ioseb be perceived as a young bandit lordling of the village children when in reality he was more a book nerd and a scholarly dweeb.
It would be best to read into any historical communist figure through multiple lenses composed of primary sources so as to better grasp what is most likely historical truth out of a vast web of ephemeral lies.
I appreciate the insight. The reason why I don’t really want to like, just read primary sources is that I’m not a historian (and only have very limited Russian) so I don’t think I really have the training to interpret disconnected primary sources into something reasonable.
I don’t know a lick of Russian outside of insults, cheers before doing shots, and random words used in Bolshevik lingo, but I make do getting elbows deep in random parts of the Soviet archives I find because I’m that boring of a person that I’d enjoy reading meeting minutes of cranky old men arguing about procedures.
It’s just about investing the time into studying which is a lot easier if it’s something you enjoy doing.