Even in college my teachers would just skim over anything about this including history. What can /his/ tell me about the USSR? Any good books? How does it compare to its fellow super power and are there any misconceptions about them that should be cleared up? Was the KGB any different from the CIA? Was the US as big of a threat as many in the USSR thought? Did they either want global communism or did they really want people to stop invading them? After Stalin, were they really the "bad guys"?
USSR general I suppose
>>369001
Pirani, Fitzpatrick, Andrle.
>How does it compare to its fellow super power and are there any misconceptions about them that should be cleared up?
Super-power is a pretty bourgeois western conception.
>Was the KGB any different from the CIA?
Conquest, Great Purge. (More like the FBI).
>Was the US as big of a threat as many in the USSR thought?
ha ha ha ha ha ha oh wow.
Read some fucking books first. Pirani, Fitzpatrick, Andrle.
>>369001
>What can /his/ tell me about the USSR?
They did it wrong, like all real world Communists. Also they were very, very bad for everyone.
>After Stalin, were they really the "bad guys"?
According to people on this board who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, yes.
>>369010
>Super-power is a pretty bourgeois western conception.
How so? Doesn't it just mean very very dominant country?
>Conquest, Great Purge. (More like the FBI).
They were like the FBI and CIA rolled into one.
Not OP btw.
> Pirani, Fitzpatrick, Andrle.
Mind if I ask why you recommend those specifically?
>>369001
One misconception is that they bear all of the credibility for industrialising Russia. The Empire was well on its way and the reds just inherited their work.
>>369010
>bourgeois western conception
Dropped
>>371198
I'm not saying he's wrong, I just want him to elaborate on that.
>>371195
The Empire was well on it's way to destruction with or without the Bolsheviks. Irrelevant point.
>>369001
Here are two bibliographies with lots of books on the soviet union in them:
Comparative Politics in Eurasia
http://pastebin.com/0n3jCCgM
Cold War 1945-1990
>>371703
http://pastebin.com/nxkmpsMm
>>370953
>Doesn't it just mean very very dominant country?
Ideas come with theoretical baggage. Super-power comes with the baggage of the post-war US "realist" international relations experts who ran the government under Ike.
>>370953
>Mind if I ask why you recommend those specifically?
Pirani deals with the triumph of Bolshevism over the working class's own instruments of power. Fitzpatrick deals with every day life for ordinary nomenklatura and explains the purges. Andrle deals with every day life for the industrial worker, and explains why workers tolerated the first three five year plans and the war.
>>372790
>Ideas come with theoretical baggage. Super-power comes with the baggage of the post-war US "realist" international relations experts who ran the government under Ike.
Mind if I ask which erroneous connotations the term super-power contains?
>Pirani deals with the triumph of Bolshevism over the working class's own instruments of power. Fitzpatrick deals with every day life for ordinary nomenklatura and explains the purges. Andrle deals with every day life for the industrial worker, and explains why workers tolerated the first three five year plans and the war.
Any advice on which specific books to start on?
>>375520
>Mind if I ask which erroneous connotations the term super-power contains?
Foreign policy orientation, great power system, "realism," sustained geo-political roles separate to systems of government or particular domestic institutions, the insignificance of secondary powers or security council members (permanent or temporary), a deliberate underplaying of the 3rd world, an over playing of "domino theories" and cockpits of war.
Andrle, Workers in Stalin's Russia
Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism
Pirani has some sample material here: http://www.revolutioninretreat.com/
