Reddit reviews The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States

Hey guys, just a reminder: we're having a big Cinema Saturday Movie event on Saturday at 4pm EST we, as well as the good people of /r/conspiratard and /r/badscience will be watching a 1 hour and 40 or so minute montage of conspiracy theory nonsense brought to you by /u/lesshatefulbullshit

As such, I think it best that we come up with a suitable drinking game for the event

On a more serious note, do any of you guys have experience with this book or its author?It's for my Modern Russia course and it does seem to have a slight anti-communist/anti/Russia slant, although it is bringing up some good points which are very valid, especially when it comes to Putin.

Also, there's this one, and this one
which seems to include some stuff on the purges and the practices of Soviet Russia, which I like subject-wise. Should prove to be interesting.

Also my books are rather thin this semester, only a few hundred pages per book, interesting. Even the primary source books are a bit on the thin side, I'm just going o assume that there's a reason for this--projects maybe.


Also plug for /r/BadEverything , /r/confederacy, and Badoysters. Also just because activity has slowed down a bit, /r/BadCGI

Also I'm sitting on /r/Maputo if anyone wants it. I just wanted to save it from any possible racists. That and /r/TotallyRealConspiracy redirects to /t/conspiratard

History college student here with a concentration in this area. I study under a well-known (in academia, haha) Russian history professor, and his overview of choice is Russia and the Russians. The book covers most of Russian history but you could skip to the Soviet Union part and have a great experience. I want to stress, however, that without some background in Russian history prior to the USSR, it'll be difficult to wrap your head around why the people have the reactions they do to events in the Russian revolutions of the early 20th century. This is why I recommend to you a book above which gives you an overview of that, too.

For a specific Soviet overview, perhaps to be read after Russia and the Russians, consider this one. The USSR section of Russia and the Russians will be shorter, and easier to digest as a first pass, but this will give you a lot more detail.

Having read multiple biographies of Stalin, this one is my favorite. As you're no doubt aware, this will give you a lot of Soviet history.

Reply or PM me with any other questions. I've personally read these books and perhaps a dozen others covering this time period so maybe I can help further.

https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Experiment-Russia-Successor-States/dp/0195340558

I have a master's in polisci. It's fun because it really makes you laugh at the Bernie Kids.

I'm not sure I, or /u/PoblachtObrithe, really understand your question as you seem to be splitting it between two very different topics. One being the historical facts of how the Soviet Union organized and calculated the wages paid to workers and a second theoretical point as to how such a calculation is performed. Unfortunately both topics are pretty complicated and simply don't lend themselves to short answers.

On the historical question of wages within the Soviet Union, they were organized under a variety of different, often coexisting regimes. The broad, structural, differences between the economic policies of Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev has been discussed somewhat. However there were many elements contained within these broad policies that lead to differences between industries and even classes.

For example, during the NEP era it was rather common for local peasant communities to organize into what were called 'artels'. These were small peasant communes, often lead by local elders, that would negotiate for a collective wage between the state, other artels or local businessmen. During the NEP these were fairly common and were organized by what can only be described as fairly free market dynamics. Though, they did survive to some extent well into the Stalinist period as so-called Brigades.

Within the industrial working sectors of the economy it was rather similar to working in any nominally capitalist society with the exception of more state control. The state could essentially veto an industrialists policies or even place managers in their positions but the dynamics were largely the same.

During the industrialization period of the Stalin era we see a dismantling of the broader market, especially for industrial production and with it working class unions shifting position. Many were more or less absorbed in some form as an arm of the state and their character changing from a role of collective bargaining or working-class organization towards a distributive arm of the state which would handle issues of welfare distribution. The artel system was still fairly common. In 1932 we see the introduction of state incentives and benefits to so-called "Shock Workers" who regularly outperformed within industrial production.

Throughout this time period the higher order of planning was performed by Gosplan which developed the famous Five Year Plans which would then be enacted by the Politiburo. These were supposed to be broader frameworks outlining the aim of Soviet development. In reality this often fell apart to resource constraints that fell on the heads of resource managers to work out. From here on I'll defer to two previous /r/askhistorians posts that I think do the job of explaining Soviet economic thought in general seen here and here much better than I could.


That said my primary sources for this are The Soviet Experiment by Ron Suny and The Political Economy of Stalinism by Paul Gregory

Ron Suny's The Soviet Experiment is very good and has sections at the end of each chapter with suggestions for further reading

https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Experiment-Russia-Successor-States/dp/0195340558/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473105688&sr=8-1&keywords=0195340558

http://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Experiment-Russia-Successor-States/dp/0195340558/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290398389&sr=1-1

And when it comes out in April:
http://www.amazon.com/Stalinist-Society-1928-1953-Oxford-Histories/dp/0199236410/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290398449&sr=1-3

Also, try:
http://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Fates-Lost-Alternatives-Stalinism/dp/0231148968/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290400077&sr=8-1

This (The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the Soviet Union, and the Successor States by Ronald Suny) is the textbook we used for my Soviet History class in college. I really enjoyed it, it wasn't very dry, it was pretty thorough about economics, politics, causes for the socialist revolution, etc. Unfortunately, it is a textbook, so somewhat pricey, but if you can find a cheap copy, it's worth it.