Best russian history books according to redditors

We found 731 Reddit comments discussing the best russian history books. We ranked the 220 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Russian History:

u/exposetheheretics · 451 pointsr/worldnews

I find myself in agreement with some of this as a left leaning person who voted for Obama.

Obama's year end news conference was the worst I've seen him.

  • he blames media for covering private emails of Potus candidate and not how they were obtained.

  • Kremlin right about one thing. News agenda set by WH. Had Obama accused Putin of personally meddling in elex, guess what headline would be?

  • There's a rich irony here. Admin that boasts of how it played journos on Iran deal now blames journos for not being better played on Russia.

  • Obama chides reporters for not covering South Sudan, a conflict he never talks about

  • All presidents conflate history with their own egos, but this one takes it to Shakespearean levels sometimes.

  • On Syria he presents a false dichotomy. Only choice is doing nothing or full ground invasion. US now has hundreds of troops in Syria and wages daily aerial sorties. His story own fucking policy belies his false dichotomy.

  • Blames the cost ("on the cheap") of intervening for not doing anything. One TLAM = about $1.6m. Lot of runways and helipads taken out for cheaper than what you spent on refugee crisis/humanitarian aid.

  • he told Putin to "cut it out" .... in the words of Jon Stewart: “You don’t want to use that phrase, dude,

  • Obama starts by telling media they botch their job, and later he's relying on them to put together evidence of an unprecedented intel crisis?


    It was the presser of a guy who now realizes his legacy is going to be Syria and Donald Trump. The rest is noise.

    Foreign Policy Failures:

  • Obama sought peace and reconciliation in the Middle East but leaves it more violent than ever. A tragedy of good intentions and bad ideas.


    "Too many things have come to him as a surprise" this video could be recorded today and the words would be just as true. Obama's failure to recognize the criticisms in this video contributed to his poor foreign policy.



    This Jimmy Carter attribution could also apply to Obama:

    >In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock

    > It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.

    Obama's flaccid response to the middle east ushered in a greater instability, sent a shockwave of fascism that spread through europe and into America and contributed to Trump's rise (made democracy more vulnerable to demagogues). [KEYWORD HERE: Contributed, not solely ]

    Aleppo’s fall is Obama’s failure

    The Iran deal has enabled the devastation of Syria, see Jay Solomon's reporting.

  • One example, establishing safe zones in Syria, which could entail fighting Iranian proxies, would jeopardize the Iran deal. Obama thinks so.

    The deal sent a crippling blow to Obama's foreign policy all over: One example

    Why hasn’t the administration done anything about Syria, and won’t? Because the Iran Deal.


    Obama's Plan to Aid Iranian Moderates Failed Spectacularly


    The Iran Deal and Sanctions Relief for Terrorists

  • General Keane: the use of hybrid warfare by Russia/Iran gives administrations deniability.

  • Keane saying that the use of proxies means that Western governments don't have to come to terms with aggression by Ru./Iran.

    UN sees small but significant Iranian nuke deal violation

    Putin has played Obama on Syria every step of the way. And winning is easy when you are the bully; destruction and a declension is considered a success.

    >“Vladimir Putin did not like the new American president from the start. For him, Barack Obama was both soft and intractable… Paradoxically, Obama, the most idealistic and peace-loving U.S. president in living memory, became a symbol of war in Russia, a target for Russian state propaganda and racist jokes, and a hate figure for millions of patriotic Russians. He was caricatured as an ill-fated enemy doomed to be defeated by Vladimir Putin.”

    All the Kremlin's Men

    >Genevieve Casagrande, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, said this was a victory for Russia, and likely its goal. Forcing Aleppo’s rebels to cooperate with jihadists would taint them, making it harder for the West to provide them arms or include them in any peace deal.

    >“Russia and the regime are driving the radicalization of the opposition on purpose,” Ms. Casagrande said. This will unify and strengthen the opposition in the short term, but in the long term will blur any distinction between jihadists and other rebels.


    Russia’s Brutal Bombing of Aleppo May Be Calculated, and It May Be Working



    Other failures:

  • No Change: (2008) Appointing friends of Marc Rich/Clinton cabinet.

  • No Change: (2008) Citibank submitted to the Obama campaign a list of its preferred candidates for cabinet positions in an Obama administration. This list corresponds almost exactly to the eventual composition of Barack Obama’s cabinet.
u/TotesNottaBot · 338 pointsr/politics

>I'm going to continue to recommend this book on any relevant threads I see (unless a mod tells me to stop for spamming reasons): Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is a book I think anyone who cares about this should read or listen to.

The Kremlin is known to behave in the same way you just described and the author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible does a really good job of describing in length the effect that has had on the Russian society.

u/IdLikeToPointOut · 174 pointsr/de

>Ein nicht zu vernacchlässigender Teil der Bevölkerung wird hier Stück für Stück, Überschrift für Überschrift, von jemandem der Merkel nicht und sich eine Strengere Flüchtlingspolitik wünscht; zu einem der allen traditionellen Medien nicht mehr traut (da sie nie über diese News berichten!) und empfänglich für Verschwörungstheorien ist.

Ein ganz wichtiger Punkt! Zu dieser Entwicklung hat der Journalist Peter Pomerantsew ein Buch mit dem passenden Titel "Nothing is true and everything is possible." geschrieben.

Die Strategie heutiger Propaganda ist nicht mehr, die Menschen auf die eigene Seite zu ziehen. Es reicht schon, das Vertrauen in die Medien der Gegenseite zu erodieren.

Dazu auch ein sehr lesenswerter Artikel von Marina Weisband in der Zeit, Zitat:

> Widersprüchliche Informationen sind deshalb so unbeliebt, weil sie kognitive Dissonanz erzeugen – die auszuhalten Ressourcen kostet. Das ist besonders zum Problem geworden, seit Informationen im Internet gesammelt werden können. Im Netz kann jedes Foto verfälscht sein, kann völlig aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen worden sein. Die Verwirrung und Belastung durch die Vielfalt der widersprüchlichen Information in den sozialen Medien sind ohnehin gewaltig. Nun kommt der Kniff der Lügner hinzu, dieses Potenzial bewusst zu instrumentalisieren.

>Wenn ich Ihnen sage: "Der Himmel ist grün", dann ist es gar nicht so sehr mein Ziel, dass Sie mir auf Anhieb glauben. Mein Ziel ist es vielmehr, so häufig zu behaupten, der Himmel sei grün, bis Ihre Ressourcen, den Widerspruch auszuhalten, erschöpft sind und Sie einlenken und sagen: "Das ist Ihre Meinung. Ich denke, der Himmel ist blau. Es gibt wohl keine Möglichkeit, die Farbe des Himmels objektiv festzustellen." Steter Tropfen höhlt den Schädel. Das Ziel offensichtlicher Lügen ist der Beweis der Machtlosigkeit von Wahrheit; die Verschiebung des Diskurses, sodass alles plötzlich infrage gestellt wird.

u/genida · 145 pointsr/politics

I strongly suggest Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Peter Pomerantsev's exploration of his time as a television producer in Russia.

They've lived under dictatorships and tsars for over a century. Every single Big Promise for the last hundred years or more has gone to the same conclusion, every power vacuum was filled quickly by worse, or at best the same as before. Organized crime is referred to as 'authority'. When the only organization of any kind was criminal, they became the de facto pseudo-government.

This has affected the culture deeply. There's a special kind of permeating philosophy in the day to day mindset, in their relationship to truth, power and certainty.

It's fascinating.

Edit: Ok, thanks for taking my Gold Virginity, random stranger :)

More links: Red Notice by the recently headlined Bill Browder, on the Magnitsky Act and its gruesome origins. I haven't, but I will read this soon.

Bill Browder's lecture on How he became Putin's No.1 Enemy. Basically a longer version of his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary.

Putin's Kleptocracy, a promising but so far a bit dry look into how Putin steals everything.

u/Lee_Ars · 106 pointsr/AbandonedPorn

There's a major wrinkle missing: the war between the two chief designers of the soviet space program that torpedoed all possibility of a soviet moon success.

Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko had a long-standing and increasingly vitriolic disagreement over which propellants the Soviet space program should be using. Korolev was in favor of cryogenic propellants—liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen (or RP1 + LOX, too). Glushko, on the other hand, favored storable hypergols instead of cryogens.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages; cryogens need to be kept very cold (or for LH2, very very cold) and because of that, fueling procedures for cryogen-powered rockets are very complex and involve a lot of conditioning and chill-down, and extra mechanisms for recapturing boil-off. Further, rockets can't be stored with fuel in them (important for ICBMs), and generally have to be de-tanked immediately if a launch is scrubbed.

Hypergols, on the other hand, are generally fine at room temperature and you can leave hypergolic-powered rockets fueled up and ready to go for extended periods without worrying about the fuel boiling away. However, hypergolic fuels tend to be murderously, hideously toxic. This means that not only are your pad workers in danger whenever they work with fuel—it means that if your rocket crashes or blows up, it spews out a horrifyingly toxic death-cloud.

The N1 was Korolev's baby. Originally intended to be used to reach Mars (or Venus, depending on who you ask), it was retasked by the Politburo and the N1-L3 plan was quickly beaten into shape. By that point in their careers, Glushko and Korolev were no longer speaking to each other; Korolev was in very poor health and died during an operation in 1965. The N1 eventually flew four times, but all four flights ended in various failures (one of the rockets exploded with the equivalent of about 1kt of TNT, making it one of the largest human-created non-nuclear explosions ever recorded). Glushko was eventually installed as the chief designer of the entire program and canceled the N1. His decision was made at least partially to spite Korolev's memory, as the N1 was Korolev's rocket.

The truly disappointing thing here is that it's very likely the N1's fifth flight, had it had one, would have been successful. However, it was 1972 at that point and the Moon wasn't really seen as a worthwhile destination for the Soviet space program anymore. Without a destination, the N1 was just a ludicrously expensive and overpowered rocket with no mission.

A fascinating historical footnote is how the Soviet space program in general, and their lunar program specifically, operated much more like how one might expect a US program to operate—numerous design bureaus were simultaneously executing several different plans at the same time, with the idea that the most successful would be expanded upon to become the "official" program. Conversely, the US used a much more Soviet-style "centrally planned" approach, allowing NASA to coordinate and control all aspects of the program through its army of contractors.

If you want to read about the Soviet space program, there are some great books available. The first—and the one I'd recommend most—is a two-volume work by Dr. Asif Siddiqi, who is the preeminent living expert on the Soviet's aborted lunar program. Part one is here, and part two is here. You can also get a single combined PDF of the whole thing (for free!) here.

The other work is Boris Chertok's Ракеты и люди ("Rakety i lyudi," or "Rockets and People") which you can get for free from NASA here, split into four volumes. Chertok was an engineer who worked in the Soviet aerospace industry and who was part of the Space Race from that side of the Iron Curtain; his first-hand experience with the Soviet side of the race makes for an incredibly illuminating read.

u/THOMAS_PAINE_is_BACK · 101 pointsr/EnoughTrumpSpam

Russia has over 150 different ethnic groups.

Far-right white nationalists in the US and EU are very confused and misled by Kremlin propaganda directed toward them and meant to cause separatism within Western nations. Putin himself is terrified of ethnic nationalism dividing Russia. The right-wing nationalism that the Kremlin promotes within Russia is a civic nationalism that includes many different ethnic groups like the Muslim Tatars and embraces Islam as an essential part of the conservative Russian narrative.

Islam is the second largest religion in Russia.

I think many of these white nationalists who praise Russia as some sort of ideal white Christian ethno-state would be very confused to know that it is illegal to criticize Islam in Russia, Putin says Russia is an ally of the Islamic world, and Putin also says there is no link between Islam and terrorism.

It is strategically convenient for the Kremlin to promote white nationalism and Islamophobia in the Western nations it wishes to weaken. While Russia’s own survival depends on integrating many different ethnic groups and faiths into the conservative Russian narrative.

When the West succumbs to Islamophobia, Russia ultimately gains the upper-hand in relations with the Islamic world and thus a strategic advantage in the Middle East. On the flip side, the Kremlin has promoted anti-US and anti-Western sentiment amongst it’s neighboring Muslim countries for decades by fueling radicalism in the region to undermine US interests.

In his book Disinformation, former Soviet Lieutenant General and defector, Ion Mihai Pacepa, explained the KGB’s role in radicalizing the Muslim world against the US via propaganda and dezinformatsiya:

>Andropov’s disinformation machinery was working around the clock to persuade the Islamic world that Israel and the United States intended to transform the rest of the world into a Zionist fiefdom. According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a petri dish in which the KGB community could nurture a virulent strain of American-hatred.

There is one very clear distinction between Trump and Putin; the Kremlin responds to extremism by embracing Islam and decrying that terrorism is not representative of the faith.

These same white nationalists are completely ignorant of the fact that Russia also cultivates and promotes far-left extremist groups in Western nations to fuel separatism. Russia's end goal is to divide and isolate Western nations so that they can step in and establish a dominant Eurasian international order led by the Kremlin. White nationalists in the US and EU are just useful idiots and another means to achieving this.

u/Psydonk · 86 pointsr/worldnews

> if we'd meddled, why would we have left an asshead like Putin in charge?

Ironically, because of US meddling, Putin IS in charge.

1996 elections, huge amounts of meddling by the United States and Russian Oligarchs on the side of United Russia to keep Yeltsin in charge. It's pretty much an open secret that the KPRF and Zyuganov won, but it was rigged and forwhatever reason Zyuganov didn't dispute and ran from a position of power. (though other opposition figures did in fact call out the results, there was also pretty much blatant rigging seen live on TV). (also off topic but releated, very much like the Communist party before Lenin, despite everyone trying to give them power, just constantly refused for whatever reason to step up, a book just got released on the topic called October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville)

The Oligarchs and the US kept a braindead husk of a man in power and when he stepped down (god look at the state he was in), Putin rose to power.

If the US and the Oligarchs had not rigged that election, 100% Putin would not be in power today.

u/ActiveMeasures · 76 pointsr/UnresolvedMysteries

That 9/11 conspiracy theories were originally propagated by the Russian intelligence services in order to discredit the US. The former Soviet bloc intelligence services employ a policy of disinformation known as Active Measures (I take my user name from this operative paradigm) which is essentially the use of social engineering to discredit people and institutions. There is a decent Wikipedia article on this topic. Several decades ago an archive was smuggled out of the KGB by a defector that shows the KGB was involved in using letters written to conspiracy theorists in the guise of disenfranchised intelligence officers wanting to come clean about CIA involvement in takin the moon landing, the assassination of JFK and many others. Many nations (including the Western nations) use disinformation as a simple, cheap, and effective form of discrediting opponents.

A good background in these operations can be found in the writings of General Ion Pacepa and the Mitrokhin archive.

Some interesting sources:

Active Measures

The Mitrokhin Archive

An interesting example of an operation

A book by Ion Pacepa that is very much worth reading. It goes into detail about these intelligence operations

I also recommend Red Horizons - a very important book.

I ask this: is it crazier to believe in a wide ranging conspiracy or tactical disinformation to discredit your enemies?

u/rocketsocks · 76 pointsr/AskHistorians

There were several key elements to the Soviet manned moon program. The spacecraft components were the Soyuz 7K-LOK (the equivalent of the Apollo CSM) and the LK Lander (the equivalent of the LM). The major launch component was the N1 rocket. Additionally, the Soviets developed the Zond spacecraft for manned flybys of the moon on a free return trajectory which could be launched on the Proton rocket.

Unfortunately, every launch attempt of the N1 failed and the Soviets were never able to achieve any degree of operational success in their moon program. By 1969 the Soviets had the capability on paper to launch manned spacecraft to orbit the moon, but not land on it. It was not until 1974 that LK lander development was finished, they even planned another N1 launch attempt with an unmanned LOK/LK stack to attempt a robotic dry run of a moon landing. But by they decided not to push their luck with the N1 and the cancellation of further Apollo landings reduced the pressure to try to keep up.

Hypothetically, if nothing had failed and the Soviets were aggressive at putting crews on launches then they could have put a man on the moon by 1974, perhaps a few years earlier. Somewhat more realistically, if they had not cancelled their program and didn't have any other major N1 failures then they probably would have been able to make a landing in 1975 or so.

Further Reading:

u/RocketSphere · 69 pointsr/geopolitics

I think one of the biggest problems facing us when looking at the politics of other nations is exercising cognitive empathy. The Intercept wrote a very decent article on this. Every nation has a group of powerful people trying to control the general narrative to influence the population. They generally are able to do this because think-tanks are beholden to the moneyed interests of their donors, and press corps frequently reference the statements made by think-tanks and are subject to interests of their very own shareholders. You see, when people in powerful positions try to direct a narrative, one of their first goals is to remove cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is the ability to relate to another persons or groups objectives and their situation. But propaganda attempts to throw a bowl of watercolour at another nation, and trying to create a specific negative image that always appears in our minds when we think of the name of a country. Through repeatedly showing images of a certain hue of colour, framed with a certain negativity, it will always be imprinted in our minds until we see reality otherwise. Think of Russia, picture it in your head. What colours do you see? Is it blue, grey, possibly red? All colours that evoke negative emotion, like anger or a depressed mood. When simplifying Russian politics to the archetypes of a single individual, propaganda makes a nations motivations more easily understandable and is more able to depict a nation as having malicious motivations. A nation can be boiled down to the behaviours of a single individual in this context, and can therefore be depicted as erratic or sociopathic to an audience. In the case of Vladimir Putin, it typically serves to depict Russia as draconian, diabolically cunning, and holding malicious self-interests. In the case of North Korea, it serves to depict the nation as an irritable child acting out of anger and frustration. This is never necessarily true. Through coupling these methods of propaganda together, consciously or not, the narrative that spokesmen and think-tanks like to set is able to inhibit the cognitive empathy the common individual is able to exercise and make a nations foreign policy more appealing. Make no mistake, the same is exercised in Russia when discussing the West.

Liberalism tends to buttress this propaganda by asserting that the aggressiveness of a nation is driven somehow inextricably linked to how authoritarian it is, and the actions an authoritarian leader undertakes is purely for the sake of maintaining power. Otherwise, there would be no need for aggression, and the world would generally be a peaceful place. This sort of position is deeply rooted in an American outlook on the world, where liberal politics and a liberal economy are generally seen as the most ideal form of governance. It's rooted in the Neoconservatism of the late-Cold War, the Democratic Peace Theory, and generations of American leaders preaching the virtues of their political system and its ideology to their citizens. It is for this reason that Liberalism as an interpretation holds so much appeal to the average American. Since the Puritans first established their colonies in New England, they described themselves as building a 'city upon a hill,' so to speak. Their virtues and values were superior to that of the old world, dominated by the Catholicism they had departed from. Of course, through the ebb and flow of American history, this view generally subsided. But Americans still see liberal democracy as the most ideal form of governance, and usually hold their value system as the most progressive, advanced, or lacking in prejudice. Something that Liberalism fails to describe is that, in the face of increasingly agitating other nations, suppressing civil liberties internally, and stagnating the economy of the nation, all in the name of maintaining power, why do they seek that power? Power is an instrument to be used, not the object of someone's aspirations or goals. Are they ideologically charged? If so, why do they run against the interests of promoting their ideology by unnecessarily engaging in aggressive actions? If they are motivated by self-interest entirely, why do they go through the effort of moving their way into an administrative position demanding massive responsibility where lower-ranked positions exist elsewhere that better serve self-interests? They would occupy a low-ranked, municipal position where they would best be suited to avoid being caught while grafting their citizens. It doesn't add up. It's easy to state that Western Liberal democracy fundamentally works for its people, and is a superior system in this regard. But, I find that this is a very dogmatic view, an opinion deeply entrenched in ideology. I could easily argue that, in the instance of America, Liberal Democracy is often undemocratic, and fails to uphold the interests of its people through dysfunction. But, there is nuance in everything, every political system is flawed, and therefore using different political systems as a metric for gauging a nations motivations falls short.

This went on way longer than I originally intended, but there is a lot to be said. If you want a good framework on Russian politics, I suggest All the Kremlin's Men. It has a strong anti-Putin slant to it, but I consider that a strength.

u/pizzashill · 57 pointsr/politics

Just an FYI this is exactly how Russia works.

>> Due to my Russian surname no one had yet noticed I was British; I kept my mouth shut. There were more than twenty of us in the room: tanned broadcasters in white silk shirts and politics professors with sweaty beards and heavy breath and ad execs in trainers. There were no women. Everyone was smoking. There was so much smoke it made my skin itch.

>> At the end of the table sat one of the country’s most famous political TV presenters. He is small and speaks fast, with a smoky voice:
We all know there will be no real politics. But we still have to give our viewers the sense something is happening. They need to be kept entertained. So what should we play with? Shall we attack oligarchs? [He continued,] Who’s the enemy this week? Politics has got to feel like . . . like a movie!
The first thing the President had done when he came to power in 2000 was to seize control of television. It was television through which the Kremlin decided which politicians it would “allow” as its puppet-opposition, what the country’s history and fears and consciousness should be.

>> And the new Kremlin won’t make the same mistake the old Soviet Union did: it will never let TV become dull. The task is to synthesize Soviet control with Western entertainment. Twenty-first-century Ostankino mixes show business and propaganda, ratings with authoritarianism. And at the center of the great show is the President himself, created from a no one, a gray fuzz via the power of television, so that he morphs as rapidly as a performance artist among his roles of soldier, lover, bare-chested hunter, businessman, spy, tsar, superman.

>> “The news is the incense by which we bless Putin’s actions, make him the President,” TV producers and political technologists liked to say. Sitting in that smoky room, I had the sense that reality was somehow malleable, that I was with Prosperos who could project any existence they wanted onto post-Soviet Russia. But with every year I worked in Russia, and as the Kremlin became ever more paranoid, Ostankino’s strategies became ever more twisted, the need to incite panic and fear ever more urgent; rationality was tuned out, and Kremlin-friendly cults and hate-mongers were put on prime time to keep the nation entranced, distracted, as ever more foreign hirelings would arrive to help the Kremlin and spread its vision to the world.


Fake news is exactly how Russia operates, smears, fake news, blatant propaganda.

This is from a great book:https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

u/ImInterested · 51 pointsr/politics

Gish Gallop is what your friends were doing.

Important to understand what Trump is doing ...

Chaos and Confusion - 10 min video

RAND Paper - 10 page paper

Book : Nothing is true, everything is possible

u/MrDannyOcean · 38 pointsr/badeconomics

creating a post-fact world where nothing can be trusted and nothing is true is the first step towards an illiberal, anti-democratic society. It's step 1 in the neo-fascist handbook. It's literally the method Putin used in Russia. See the book Nothing is true and Everything is possible

u/BR2049isgreat · 37 pointsr/europe

No, Khrushchev did not approve Stalinist policies on a personal level, trying to undo most of them while in office in the "thaw". He wrote extensively in his memoirs about his dislike of them and the guilt he felt for not being able to do more. Don't get me wrong the man believed in the oppressive nature of the USSR(at least until Brezhnev overthrew him) but he wasn't a dictator on the level of Stalin in any way.

I would recommend https://www.amazon.com/Lenins-Tomb-Last-Soviet-Empire/dp/0679751254 for a somewhat contemporary and at the same time retrospective view other USSR and its biggest figures. Tragic and sometimes funny.

u/TweeterReprise · 35 pointsr/politics

He wrote a great book called Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. I recommend you read it.

u/ClemsonTigers16 · 34 pointsr/politics

You should read Garry Kasparov’s Winter Is Coming. It details the erosion of Russian democracy in its infancy. Putin has become a dictator and aggressively undermines democracy in its neighborhood and abroad. Every US and major European leader since the fall has appeased Russia and turned a blind eye to their atrocities. American foreign policy has discarded the lessons of the previous century. Instead of standing for human rights and democracy, we have ignored the outrageous behavior of powerful countries in the hopes of economic engagement. We make principled stands against Cuba, Libya, and Yugoslavia. Yet we appease countries like Russia and China.

As a Democrat, it pains me to say that Clinton and Obama were two of the worst when it came to Russia. We need a president that will partner with Europe and other likeminded nations to take a stand against human rights violators.

u/Percival_Snugglebutt · 34 pointsr/politics

In other words, Russia.

u/LavastormSW · 33 pointsr/chernobyl

The guy who made this imgur set also has a book called "Chernobyl 1:23:40," which I have and have read multiple times. It's a little rough on the grammar, but the story and information are solid and it expands on the imgur post.

https://smile.amazon.com/Chernobyl-01-Incredible-Nuclear-Disaster-ebook/dp/B01E4MAIS8

u/mpv81 · 29 pointsr/politics

You might see the first AG (attempted) appointee that isn't even an attorney. As crazy as this circus is, you might see Alex Jones on the list. Uncharted territory here everybody.

Nothing is true and everything is possible

u/artgo · 27 pointsr/politics

> I’m interested in learning more about this. Do you have sources for these or other tactics that are being employed?

There is a book that was published after this story:, same author https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/russia-putin-revolutionizing-information-warfare/379880/ (story 2014, book 2015): https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

A lot of it comes from my personal observations, which I have basically been doing full time now since 2015 when I personally realized what was going on. my central education is Joseph Campbell's Comparative Mythology, about 8 years of learning on that, and I saw Middle East hate brother-vs-brother MEME patterns (weaponized) being pushed which I recognized from Campbell's teaching. From there, I found out about what Russia has been like the past 10 years, the media of their homeland. Then I also discovered Howard Bloom's year 2000 book about the "Mass Mind". Further, I found a 1993 theory from Duke University Rick Roderick describing a 7-hour idea that I have studied for about 400 hours in total. Roderick was worried about the future of his children, and put forth how he saw human minds could be exploited in various ways to give up their personhood (he called "our fractal selves") through media and ideas. Adam Curtis called out Surkov too, and his December 2014 declaration of the forthcoming British-Exit-EU assault I found.

It's a massive topic, and our enemy is extremely powerful. “I am the author, or one of the authors, of the new Russian system,” Vladislav Surkov told us by way of introduction. On this spring day in 2013, he was wearing a white shirt and a leather jacket that was part Joy Division and part 1930s commissar. “My portfolio at the Kremlin and in government has included ideology, media, political parties, religion, modernization, innovation, foreign relations, and ...”—here he pauses and smiles—“modern art.” - https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/hidden-author-putinism-russia-vladislav-surkov/382489/

Only this year we found out the 2012 origins and the Cambridge Analytica integration: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/11/24/a-trumprussia-confession-in-plain-sight/

As part of my understanding of where we are, I share some thoughts and patterns I am trying to make sense of over on /r/WhiteHouseHyperReal

u/yvonneka · 25 pointsr/videos

Not sure what what you mean by elaborate but basically, nearly all state records have been preserved in the USSR and its satellites after its fall. Everything from how many people were sent to the Gulag in a particular year to how many bushels of wheat were collected from Ukraine, to who rated on whom in the summer of 1934, can be found in the state archives. The only thing to keep in mind, is that the figures in most of the records are inflated (or deflated) as officials tried to make their camp, their farm, their village or city, look better to the authorities. Also, in East Germany and Poland, all the records that the Stasi (secret police) kept on its citizens were preserved and after 1989 anyone can request to see your own file and see what the gov't had on you (not sure you can do this in Russia though, can anyone confirm?). If you'd like an interesting read about the Soviet Union on communism and how bureaucratic it was (thanks to that bureaucracy we now have all these records) read Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire

u/lemon_meringue · 25 pointsr/politics

The book Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia is a really excellent (if terrifying) look at the way that the media operated by Putin's authoritarian state has manipulated and brainwashed entire populations. And it was published a solid year before the 2016 election. It's a rough read but I think it's a book everyone in America should be familiar with.

u/Turnshroud · 21 pointsr/badhistory

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

u/BBQ_HaX0r · 19 pointsr/masseffect

> You don't understand.

No YOU don't understand. Go read a book about how the Soviets dealt with Chernobyl. Go read about their concern for the environment and their own citizens. Here, educate yourself what communism does to the environment before you start blaming all of the environmental woes on capitalism. See what the communists think about the environment not to mention the human price paid as well. Go read what the people who lived under communism witnessed and endured. That's communism for you. Everywhere you look communism just shits on the environment. But, it's capitalism's fault!

> but capitalism is the single biggest contributing factor to environmental destruction

Almost like 95% of the world is capitalist or something!

> China has the ability to direct and force itself to be more environmentally focused... and its already starting to shift in that direction.

Well, they can really only go up? Because China is so much better, with their state-controlled economy, at caring for the environment then all those 'capitalist' countries. All those shortcuts they have to take to remain competitive certainly comes at the expense of the environment. Name me a non-capitalist country that protects the environment? Venezuela? Cuba? USSR again?

You want to know what actually protects the environment? Capitalism. Ya know how there are all those companies that actually promote how sustainable their products are? Or how environmentally friendly their companies and work places are? Yeah, that's capitalism at work for you. That's the consumers saying 'I'd like the products I buy to have as minimal impact as they could' and the companies, through market forces, responding.

Humans are bad for the environment, no matter the system they live in. The ignorance to blame it solely on 'capitalism' is quite laughable. What alternative is better? Because it sure as hell ain't anything marxist.

Edit: added some links

u/[deleted] · 19 pointsr/Christianity

No Man is an Island By Thomas Merton

Clowning in Rome By Henri Nouwen.

The Great Divorce By C.S. Lewis

Beginning to Pray By Archbishop Anthony Bloom

For the Life of the World By Fr Alexander Schmemann

Christ the Conqueror of Hell By Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev

Christ the Eternal Tao By Hieromonk Damascene

The Way of the Pilgrim

Marriage as a Path to Holiness-Lives of Married Saints By David and Mary Ford

On the Incarnation By St Athanasius

On Social Justice By St Basil the Great

The Ladder of Divine Ascent By St John Climacus

I'm currently trying to finish Fr Seraphim Rose- His Life and Works for the third time and despite my apparent inability to complete it, I really do enjoy it.

u/UserNamesCantBeTooLo · 19 pointsr/worldnews

That's best summed up in chess grandmaster-turned-human-rights-activist Garry Kasparov's book WINTER IS COMING.

Basically, by not doing anything when Putin committed human rights violations, ran sham elections, or invaded neighbors. Sanctions only started to bite with the 2012 Magnitsky Act and at the end of 2014 after Russia invaded Ukraine. (The Magnitsky Act didn't hurt the Russian economy, it mainly hurt Putin and his cronies specifically). Most of the time, as when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, other world leaders just called it "troubling" and did nothing.

It's surprising how the West has treated this mafia state as a legitimate government. They added Russia to the G7 to make it the G8 for a time. Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul, and liked what he saw.

It might sound like I'm just disparaging the Russian government, but it really is like the mafia.

One of the next people to be assassinated might be Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who used to be the richest man in Russia. (A guy who works for Khodorkovsky was poisoned last month)

Khodorkovsky was imprisoned after Putin rose to power because he was funding opposition parties.


What happened next was described in Bill Browder's Senate testimony last year:
> "After Khodorkovsky’s conviction, the other oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin’s answer was, 'Fifty percent.' He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world..."


Bill Browder is an American who worked in investment in Russia. He worked and became friends with Sergei Magnitsky, a tax lawyer who discovered and publicized theft of tax dollars by Putin's friends. After Magnitsky blew the whistle, Putin’s government arrested him, then tortured and beat him to death.


Because of this, the U.S. passed the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions on Russian oligarchs connected to Putin.


Putin became richer than Bill Gates by stealing and self-dealing in his position at the top of Russia's government. The Magnitsky Act threatens that and is motivating Putin to increase his influence in other countries, hoping to get sanctions lifted.


That's the key to understanding the Russian government's behavior: Putin ruthlessly uses his government for personal gain, and badly wants sanctions lifted.

He's now getting what he wants:

  1. Trump Jr. offered rescinding the Magnitsky Act in exchange for dirt on Clinton in that infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents.

  2. Trump Sr. told Maria Butina, a Russian activist, shortly after starting his campaign that he wanted to lift sanctions on Russia.

  3. After it was revealed Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, the Obama administration imposed further sanctions on Russia, but Trump’s team had Mike Flynn contact the Russian ambassador to assure him Trump would undo those sanctions. Flynn was later indicted for lying to the FBI about those secret conversations.

  4. The U.S. Congress mandated new sanctions on Russia, and Trump has refused to enforce them.
u/restricteddata · 17 pointsr/AskHistorians

First, you should know that historians don't really deal in categories like "good" or "bad" or "evil" or whatever. They are just not useful historical categories. That doesn't mean, of course, that we leave our moral sentiments at the door. But the goal is to try and lay out the facts and then allow people to draw whatever moral conclusions they want from those.

On your specific questions:

  1. Stalin was a dictator. This is not very debatable. Though the structure of the Soviet government was more complicated than it is often understood in the United States, Stalin ruled with an iron fist. He micromanaged Soviet life, brooked no serious opposition, and issued degrees that could not be deviated from or challenged. He even waded into areas of life that he knew nothing about, like linguistics or agriculture, and his opinion could not be challenged without risking imprisonment or death. He effectively outlawed entire fields of study (genetics, cybernetics, lots of other things). He had a cult of personality that boggles the mind. Whatever one thinks of Stalin, claiming he was not a dictator is just false beyond false. Again, the way in which power operated in the Soviet system, even under Stalin, was more complex than one man at the top simply decreeing things, but that is true of all dictatorships, and does not dilute the fact that he had unquestioned, concentrated power.

  2. Did he care for his people? Did he do what was right for his country? This is all pretty debatable. In some sense, the best one can do is say that Stalin genuinely appeared to have cared about the USSR in some sort of larger sense. The individual people within it, though, were often subsumed to that greater purpose. So from Stalin's point of view, locking up a substantial portion of the population as "wreckers" was a good thing for the USSR, because "wreckers" (and Trotskyites and so on) were, by definition, bad for the USSR. Of course, we know now, and many people knew then, that most of the people locked up for political crimes were in fact fairly arbitrarily incarcerated. They were not even dissidents in any real sense; it was not about "locking up enemies" so much as "locking up people and declaring them enemies." It was also along the lines of, "locking up soldiers who saw the West during World War II," which is particularly sad (that is, the very people who brought the war to Hitler's doorstep were treated as traitors when they got home).

    This is entirely neglecting the disaster that was collectivization (which killed many millions), the disastrous way Stalin micromanaged World War II (almost losing everything), and the the levels of cruelty and depravity he permitted amongst his immediate subordinates (look up Beria's rape "habit" if you want to be particularly disgusted — it is like something out of a bad horror movie).

    What Stalin gets a lot of credit for is winning World War II and for the rapid industrialization of the USSR. He famously took over the country when it was using manual plows and left it as a nation with nuclear weapons. All of this was done with a considerable amount of unnecessary bloodshed, but they are both accomplishments of a sort. The speculative question is whether these things could have been accomplished without the great tolls that came out of Stalin's approach to accomplishing them. If one claims these things as Stalin's positive accomplishments, one still must reconcile the immense loss of life and livelihood that took place under his rule. It is hard to imagine a more bloody means to get to these ends.

  3. Were things better off during Communism? This is a tough, tough question. I don't know about Georgia, but for Russia, after the immediate fall of the USSR, things got pretty bad. Today they are not quite as bad as that, but the petro-oligarchy that is currently the Russia power structure has many problems. The late stages of the USSR, from the 1970s through the 1980s, were comparatively stable. There were harsh limits on political freedom, to be sure, and there were severe economic problems at various junctures. Is that better or worse than the current condition, where inequity is clear, political dissidents are still harassed, journalists are murdered, and so on? I can completely understand why someone who grew up under the stable period before thought it was better than the current period.

    The desire for a "strong man" approach in post-Communist Russia, and probably Georgia as well, is understandable, and no doubt is what is behind Putin's own success. That Russia in particular did poorly in the immediate post-Cold War is not too surprising: the country never had anything like real democracy, and suddenly was supposed to convert to some kind of modern liberal state? A somewhat obviously unlikely thing to succeed. That people pine for old, stable days, and for patriotic myths, is not surprising; we see this in all countries. Liberal democracy is hard work and appears to be the historically outlier position, not the "natural" way that power gets divvied up in a state, and it comes with many disappointments and frustrations.

    A readable book on post-Communist Russia, and its seemingly paradoxical relationship with the memory of Stalin, is David Remnick's _Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. It is not so much a work of history as an excellent work of historically-informed journalism, but it does a lot of work in helping one make sense of the mindset you are talking about.

    On Stalin's various crimes, there is a wide literature. I have found David Joravksy's
    The Lysenko Affair_ to be quite useful in seeing the many ways in which Soviet power was more diverse than just "Stalin says so," even if Stalin was ultimately the primary axis around which it rotated. Lysenkoism is also a good case study for the complexities of asking whether Stalin was doing things for the "good" of the country; though I caution that it is much more complicated than the lay understanding of it (it was just not an ideological commitment, but an interplaying of various influenced relating to collectivization, the way the Soviet press operated, and political in-fighting).
u/AvroLancaster · 13 pointsr/JordanPeterson

If you want to follow that path even further, read this book.

It's a journey through how Putin creates exactly the feeling you're experiencing to control Russia, how the strategy developed over time, and what it's like to live in Russia once truth died.

u/florinandrei · 12 pointsr/technology

I understand the sentiment, and I've been in very demanding jobs too, and if it's not rewarding in a way that matters to you then it sucks. Believe me, I know.

But look at it this way: if you want a cushy job, stay with the average employer. If you want to be part of the new chapter in space exploration, be prepared to do what the best and the brightest in that field do.

Conquering space is not gonna happen on a 9 to 5 schedule. But being an average citizen and watching that conquest on Youtube is totally doable within a lifestyle supported by a 9 to 5 kind of job.

Make your choice and accept the consequences.

---

P.S.:

Read the biography of Sergey Korolev, the "russian Elon Musk" back in the '50s and '60s. He had a very similar leadership style as Elon's and a great deal of his genius too. His people were working round the clock to shoot Sputnik 1 up into orbit; not because the Kremlin was demanding it, but because they truly believed they were writing history - which they definitely were.

Great achievements require great efforts.

u/vikings_70 · 12 pointsr/politics

For those of you interested in the book itself, it comes out tomorrow, November 16th. You can get it here from Amazon.

u/PapaFish · 12 pointsr/worldnews

If you are looking for a more in depth look into how foreign governments (specifically the USSR and the current Russian gov't) use(d) 'critical theory' in actual practice as part of real life gov't orchestrated cultural subversion campaigns abroad, check out Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West.

For further explanation on its involvement in modern race relations, specifically as it applies to an critical examination of society and culture, to the intersection of race, law, and power., check out 'critical race theory'.

u/BrooWel · 12 pointsr/KotakuInAction

The very terms used by that commenter show him to be a leftist trying to deflect and prop up the image of Soviet Union.

Here is another source - which pretty much confirms Bezmenov's claims: https://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604

In case history itself has not validated him enough.

Also do note that anecdotes I heard from people as well as other sources (other Soviet dissidents, Orwell, etc...) pretty much confirm what Bezmenov's claims.

u/leebd · 10 pointsr/chernobyl

Okay so I'll say this up front. Most of my information comes from my cousin, a nuke tech, and the following book.

The general concept of a nuclear power plant is you are using the energy and heat from a nuclear reaction to create steam to spin a turbine. That turbine has a north and south pole that when turned within a coil produce electricity.

When they are talking about the core they are talking about the chamber, cooling system, and reaction control system for that nuclear reaction. Chernobyl used graphite control rods to speed up or slow down the reaction as needed for energy production. US Plants use a different system that doesn't involve graphite as the control substrate if I remember correctly.

During this disaster however the control rods didn't insert fully to stop the reaction and the excess heat caused an explosion which blew the top of the reactor core through the roof.

The following is a pretty good illustration of what the reactor core was supposed to look like. The core itself is the red square and figure 24 is what went flying through the roof of the facility.

Anybody else with more or better information feel free to chime in because I'll admit I'm not an expert here, just a history nerd.

u/insanemetal187 · 10 pointsr/Libertarian

...not that bad? Here's a quora post?!

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

For about what it was actually like during that time.

Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick


About what it looked like around the fall of USSR.

Eastern Border Podcast

If you want something more casual, less dense and a podcast

If you weren't a party member there was no "pretty good win" for anyone. I would have happily been homeless in any other first world country than "middle class" in a socialist country during the 20th century.

u/kdoubledogg · 10 pointsr/Catholicism

> in that respect, he doesn't seem all that different from the media image of vladimir putin

When I see statements like this, it always reminds me of this excellent BBC article on Russian media tactics.

> Peter Pomerantsev, who recently spent several years working on documentaries and reality shows for Russian TV, argues that Russian state media are not just distorting truth in Ukraine, they go much further, promoting a seductive nihilism.

> "The Russian strategy, both at home and abroad, is to say there is no such thing as truth," he says.

> "I mean, you know, 'The Americans are bad, we're bad, and everyone's bad, so what's the big deal about us being a bit corrupt? You know our democracy's a sham, their democracy's a sham.'

> "It's a sort of cynicism that actually resonates very powerfully in the West nowadays with this lack of self-confidence after the Iraq War, after the financial crash - and that's what the Russians are hoping for, just to take that cynicism and then use that in a military environment."

By the way, if you liked that little blurb, you'll love Pomerantsev's entertaining book, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible.

EDIT: Linking the BBC article

u/puntinbitcher · 10 pointsr/politics

I highly recommend reading Winter is Coming by Kasparov. It gives a pretty chilling look at what Putin has been doing to Russia.

u/TenMinuteHistory · 9 pointsr/AskHistorians

This is mostly right to my mind. However, I'd just be clear that economic reasons weren't the only cause of downfall in the Soviet Union. Social and Cultural reasons also played an important role (See for example: Alexei Yurchak's Everything was Forever Until it Was No More, or Ronald Suny's Revenge of the Past )

Anyway, I digress.

Back on to the topic of economics, I think in the US we've so internalized that Capitalism is the only way to economic success that we sort of don't consider what was actually going on, we just hear communism and kind of shut down our brains (but not in this subreddit of course!). In reality the Soviet economy was quite complex and resembled "communism" (small "c") not particularly to more of an an extent than the modern US economy resembles "capitalism." As a result, when you toss away the preconceived notions and look at the pure history of it, you see that the Soviet Economy actually had plenty of room to grow (which has been outlined already in here in a few places, so I won't rehash them here). Also, it should be obvious that "The Soviet Economy" wasn't a monolithic thing throughout its entire history. It underwent considerable changes in both form and function, and to go into all of those would really make this way too long, but suffice to say that if you want to closely analyze the economy of the Soviet Union you have to at the very least specify a time period.

u/Archare · 9 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

"leading historian" tymothy snyder

readbloodlies

u/Garet-Jax · 9 pointsr/worldnews

You need to read this book

RT is indeed a worthless propaganda rag.

u/srasp413 · 8 pointsr/dataisbeautiful

Addition: if you want to read in amazing detail how horrible the Bolsheviks revolution was, read A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes. I was always of the opinion that Lenin and Trotsky were alright guys (partially because of Animal Farm), but after reading it... holy shit.

u/johnnytoomuch · 8 pointsr/Catacombs

"The Orthodox Church" By Kallistos Ware. A very readable and comprehensive book by a well respected convert now bishop.

Byzantine Theology by John Meyendorff. He is one of the greatest contemporary Orthodox theologians.

The Way of the Pilgrim Author unknown. This is a classic of Eastern Christian spirituality that brings many people into the Orthodox way.

Hope these help!

u/Randy_Newman1502 · 8 pointsr/badeconomics

Someone should teleport these people to Soviet era stores. From Lenin's Tomb:

>But with glasnost, the directors grew humble and put up an astonishingly frank display: “The Exhibit of Poor-Quality Goods.”

>At the exhibit, a long line of Soviets solemnly shuffled past a dazzling display of stunning underachievement: putrid lettuce, ruptured shoes, rusted samovars, chipped stew pots, unraveled shuttlecocks, crushed cans of fish, and, the show-stopper, a bottle of mineral water with a tiny dead mouse floating inside.

>All the items had been purchased in neighborhood stores. “It was time to inject a little reality into the scene here,” one of the guides told me. The exhibit was unsparing, a vicious redefinition of socialist realism. In the clothing section, red arrows pointed to uneven sleeves, faded colors, cracked soles. One piece of jewelry was labeled, simply, “hideous,” and no one argued.

>“Let me tell you a little secret,” a transport worker, Aleksandr Klebko, said as we filed past the display of rotten fruit. “This isn’t so bad. I’ve seen worse. Most stores have less than this. Or nothing at all.”

u/MasCapital · 8 pointsr/communism

Prof. Furr says,

>I’m happy to announce the publication of my new book:

>Grover Furr. BLOOD LIES: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands Is False.

>Plus: What Really Happened in: the Famine of 1932-33; the “Polish Operation”; the “Great Terror”; the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; the “Soviet invasion of Poland”; the“Katyn Massacre”; the Warsaw Uprising; and “Stalin’s Anti-Semitism”

>_

>Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (N.Y: Basic Books, 2010) is by far the most successful attempt to date to equate Stalin with Hitler, the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. It has received dozens of rave reviews, prizes for historiography; and has been translated into 26 languages.

>Snyder’s main targets are Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union during Stalin’s time. Snyder's broader claim is that the Soviets killed 6 to 9 million innocent civilians to the Nazis’ 14 million. Snyder finds parallels between Soviet and Nazi crimes at every turn.

>I have methodically checked every single footnote to anything that could be construed as a crime by Stalin, the USSR, or pro-Soviet communists.

>Snyder’s main sources are in Polish and Ukrainian, in hard-to-find books and articles. Many sources are reprinted in Blood Lies in their original languages – Polish, Ukrainian, German, Russian – always with English translations.

>I have found, and prove in the book, that every single “crime” Snyder alleges is false – a fabrication.

>Often Snyder’s sources do not say what he claims. Often Snyder cites anticommunist Polish and Ukrainian secondary sources that do the lying for him. Not a single accusation holds up.

>In Blood Lies I expose the lies and falsehoods behind Soviet history of the Stalin period with the same attention to detail as I do in my 2011 book Khrushchev Lied and my 2013 book The Murder of Sergei Kirov.

>_


>ISBN: 978-0-692-20099-5 Price: $25.00 plus $5.00 shipping

>Available from:

> Red Star Publishers:

>http://redstarpublishers.org // [email protected]

>
Amazon.com:

>http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Lies-Evidence-Accusation-Bloodlands/dp/0692200991/

>* me, the author (signed copies): [email protected]

>Please consider ordering from my publisher or myself! Amazon.com charges a large commission. My small socialist publishers deserve the support.

>And please -- Pass the word along! Tell your friends, comrades, colleagues.

u/ThreadbareHalo · 8 pointsr/worldnews

Russia's constitutions a two consecutive term limit on the presidency of four years. Putin took a break and had Medvedev step in, many argue to get around this limit as well as increase the duration of each term (see source at the time). He also, as proposed in this article, suggested removing the consecutive part of the limit, but of course stated that that wouldn't apply to him. You can also read Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov (former Russian world chess champion) for some more interesting political two steps done to keep regimes in power.

u/dem0n0cracy · 8 pointsr/PoliticalHumor

Because Russia is a dictactorship. Putin has been in power for 17 years and kills those who oppose him. I guess you'd support Trump to do that too, even if he's walking around 5th avenue shooting people. I suppose you haven't read books such as Disinformation https://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/product-reviews/1936488604 and you think Russia is...good because it's an oil-based oligarchy?

P.S. They also attacked our election and put a fucking whiny little rich brat in the white house.

u/TheBotsAreBackInTown · 7 pointsr/politics

Also, check out Nothing is True and Everything is Possible for more on how the Russian society has been led down a hole of pessimistic cynicism through the use of the Firehose. It's sickening to see it happening here in the US, but moreso infuriating that it's coming from the Oval Office and the shitstain with a breathing apparatus they float as spokesperson.

u/Jackdaws7 · 6 pointsr/ChernobylTV

The show is based off the accounts from various historical depictions, writings, stories, including the words from survivors themselves. Like this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Chernobyl-History-Nuclear-Disaster/dp/0312425848

>Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown---from innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster---and their stories reveal the fear, anger, and uncertainty with which they still live

It is exceptionally accurate.

https://www.bustle.com/p/how-accurate-is-chernobyl-the-upcoming-hbo-miniseries-pays-so-much-attention-to-detail-17304704

>Craig Mazin, who wrote and served as executive producer for the five-part miniseries, told Deadline, “We want to be as accurate as we can be. We never changed anything to make it more dramatic or to hype it up. The last thing we wanted to do is fall in to the same trap that liars fall into." He also promised that Chernobyl is "is as close to reality as possible within five hours."

>So far, critics are generally in agreement that the showrunners have lived up to their promise. In his five-star review of the show, the BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz called Chernobyl "horrifyingly accurate."

Also the show was filmed mainly in Lithuania with cast members who lived under Soviet rule. They had many people read the script before hand in order to make the tiniest details accurate - like the first scene where we see the cat eating leftover food on a regular plate.

There was no "cat food" or pet bowls and this tiny detail is one aspect of their attention to accuracy.

u/TheHayisinTheBarn · 6 pointsr/politics

Russia has been "courting" Trump since the 80s. Trump's personality and money woes were "useful" to the Russian oligarchy. Read the book Collusion for details on this and much more.
https://www.amazon.com/Collusion-Secret-Meetings-Russia-Helped/dp/0525562516

u/the_last_mimsey · 6 pointsr/CringeAnarchy

Yeah that's because most conspiracy theorist are anti-semetic, but since it's not acceptable anymore to march around in a brown shirt and attack Jews they have to stick to these shitty theories to try and prove that the Jews are the aggressors in everything and that they need to defend themselves against the Jewish menace.

For extra keks check out the book disinformation, it outlines a lot of the Soviet propaganda including apparent plots by the KGB to stir up anti-sematism in the Middle East just to fuck with the US. So while a lot of these conspiratards think they know the truth, they really are just falling for old school Soviet propaganda.

Для славного Советского Союза и возвращения коммунизма брата!

u/tayaravaknin · 5 pointsr/Ask_Politics

I can't vouch for these books, but these are the ones on my list that I've heard are good. I know at least the first one will probably address precisely what you want to know, and is written by reputable scholars at the Brookings Institution:

  • Mr. Putin (Updated edition).

  • The Putin Corporation

  • All the Kremlin's Men

    These describe his life, events that shaped him, and how Russia is structured now, according to the descriptions. I'm fairly sure all three have reputable authors and are worth a read.

    If you want to read more about the Cold War that may have shaped his understanding of Russian history, you can check out some potential good reads there, from a historical perspective.
u/Idea666 · 5 pointsr/worldnews

Also there is this book, its also about background in Russian politics, its something like house of cards but in real life...

u/Amy_Ponder · 5 pointsr/StrangerThings

In Kiev they gave me an apartment. It was in a large building, where they put everyone from the atomic station. It's a big apartment, with two rooms, the kind Vasya and I had dreamed of. And I was going crazy in it!

I found a husband eventually. I told him everything—the whole truth—that I have one love, for my whole life. I told him everything. We'd meet, but I'd never invite him to my home, that's where Vasya was.

I worked in a candy shop. I'd be making cake, and tears would be rolling down my cheeks. I'm not crying, but there are tears rolling down.

I gave birth to a boy, Andrei. Andreika. My friends tried to stop me. "You can't have a baby." And the doctors tried to scare me: "Your body won't be able to handle it." Then, later—later they told me that he'd be missing an arm. His right arm. The instrument showed it. "Well, so what?" I thought. "I'll teach him to write with his left hand."

But he came out fine. A beautiful boy. He's in school now, he gets good grades. Now I have someone—I can live and breathe him. He's the light in my life. He understands everything perfectly. "Mom, if I go visit grandma for two days, will you be able to breathe?"

I won't! I fear the day I'll have to leave him. One day we're walking down the street. And I feel that I'm falling. That's when I had my first stroke. Right on the street.

"Mom, do you need some water?"

"No, just stand here next to me. Don't go anywhere." And I grabbed his arm. I don't remember what happened next. I came to in the hospital. But I grabbed him so hard that the doctors were barely able to pry my fingers open. His arm was blue for a long time.

Now we walk out of the house, he says, "Mommie, just don't grab my arm. I won't go anywhere." He's also sick: two weeks in school, two weeks at home with a doctor. That's how we live.

[She stands up, goes over to the window.]

There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called—Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else?

Often they die. In an instant. They just drop—someone will be walking, he falls down, goes to sleep, never wakes up. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them.

But I was telling you about love. About my love . . .

--Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman Vasily Ignatenko. Excerpt from Voices of Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexeivich (Part 6/6)

u/ProfessorDingus · 5 pointsr/geopolitics

>Why?

To survive and continue an existence that provides some measure of certainty. The Chinese hukou system limits the ability of Chinese citizens to migrate to cities with more economic opportunity by barring people from legally residing, receiving social services (education, health, etc.), or working outside of their hukou. As many low-skilled Chinese workers are not allowed to live and work in economically vibrant areas such as the Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen (the Tier 1 cities), their alternatives are to move to a lower tier city/province that may not provide meaningful employment year-round, wither in their current position, or move somewhere with economic opportunity (the U.S., Europe, overseas in Asia, in neighboring Asian countries). If they choose the latter, they are often willing to illegally immigrate.

We are unlikely to see tens of thousands of Chinese pouring across the Russian border for work. Indeed, many who work there now are likely nott planning to do so permanently. However, this doesn't rule out the possibility of long-term demographic shifts in Russia's Far East.

>but I've never seen any numbers

I can think of two reasons, though I'm sure there could be more:

  • The numbers are published in Chinese and Russian and researchers in the Anglosphere may not publish this in readily available format (namely, in English) outside of their academic works. People who might be otherwise interested in such a topic- policymakers, researchers, data collectors at an international organization, redditors on a geopolitics subreddit, ideologues- do not have the time, knowledge, or motivation to translate said numbers and have an easily searchable public place for such numbers.

  • Both the Russian and Chinese governments are mutually interested in not drawing attention to the numbers. Like most governments in power, the Russian government (or rather, Vladimir Putin's United Russia) advertises its legitimacy to rule in a flawed democracy via economic opportunity and social stability. Having Chinese immigrants or migrant workers displace Russian workers in struggling rural areas of the Russian Far East (David Remnick's book Lenin's Tomb has a chapter that highlights the issues that plague the Russian Far East) undermines the promise of economic opportunity for Russian citizens of all ethnic groups and their status within society. The Chinese Communist Party also advertises its own legitimacy via economic opportunity and social stability, and having its citizens go to other states for employment in agriculture or manufacturing would be seen as indicative of the CCP's inability to fully provide that- lending ammunition for opposition from party "liberals" and outsiders alike. Additionally, there have been tensions regarding this issue since the dissolution of the USSR. There is no reason to disrupt recent Sino-Russian cooperation, particularly when there are no domestic incentives to push the issue.


    >China itself is big enough for all Chinese people

    China's seaboard (where most of its economic activity lies) is incredibly dense in terms of population. The interior of China has far less economic activity than the seaboard, and is likely the source of many of the unemployed. The hukou system is partially designed to encourage internal migration towards non-tier 1 cities, and has been notably accompanied by the infamous construction sprees by local municipalities that led to the phenomenon known as "ghost cities". Such sprees did not always end in ghost cities as documented by Western media, but were nonetheless an issue.

    >Russia isn't that much richer than China

    True, but it doesn't need to be rich so much as appear to be better than the alternatives. I'd imagine most Chinese immigrants/migrant workers to Russia were displaced from Chinese agricultural communities and would prefer that sort of lifestyle to industrial work in a non-tier 1 city that is likely facing layoffs due to China's supply-side & state-owned enterprise (SoE) reforms.

    >prospects of Chinese immigrant in Russia without knowing the language and local customs aren't good either

    Chinese immigrants/migrant workers have interacted with Russians in the area for centuries (the RAND article I listed earlier describes this). Even if you only look at the most modern manifestations of this relationship, Chinese workers have been operating in the Russian Far East since around 1993. While they're unlikely to meaningfully advance in the social structure, they have shown the capability to survive.

    >I can imagine that young Chinese people dream about moving to rich Chinese cities, not to Russia.

    If they're uneducated, they are often unable to move to rich Chinese cities. Why not move somewhere that is somewhat familiar with Chinese migrant workers/immigrants?
u/billy_tables · 5 pointsr/actualconspiracies

Peter Pomerantsev's book about Russia and his time at RT makes a fascinating read about this:

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

u/Love_Comes_In_Spurts · 5 pointsr/politics

> nothing matters

> anything can happen

Nothing is true, and everything is possible

u/DoktorSoviet · 5 pointsr/politics

I've heard good things about Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible to detail the cultural mindset of the "New Russia" but to be frank I have yet to read it.

u/larsga · 4 pointsr/programming

In short: no. If you want to know what really happened, read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Tragedy-Russian-Revolution-1891-1924/dp/014024364X/

u/contextsubtext · 4 pointsr/suggestmeabook

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.

u/AndrewRichmo · 4 pointsr/nonfictionbookclub

This is the list I have right now, but I might take something off before tomorrow.

Walden – Henry David Thoreau

The Blind Watchmaker – Richard Dawkins


The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains – Nicholas Carr

Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics – John J. Mearsheimer

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster – Svetlana Alexievich

u/ENovi · 4 pointsr/Christianity

I would be happy to! Christ the Conqueror of Hell does a fantastic job of explaining the Orthodox view on Hell. This book does a fantastic job of introducing Orthodoxy to Protestant and Catholic Christians. In fact, it was written by a Protestant. Because of that, he does a great job of explaining some unfamiliar terms or practices to his audience since he is coming from the same place. It's essentially a very well educated Western Christian explaining the Eastern Church to other Western Christians.

I can't recommend this book enough. It's an anonymous story describing the journey of a Russian Christian and his journey through the faith. It's really uplifting and surprisingly entertaining for a book written in 18th century Russia.

Finally, if you're looking for something deep, I would recommend this one. Vladimir Lossky was a brilliant Orthodox theologian who focused on the "mystical" side of Christianity vs. the more "scholastic" approach of the West. Really, anything by him is worth your time.

Let me know if these are what you're working for. If not, I may have a few more books I can recommend. I personally think these are a great place to start.

u/nostradamefrus · 4 pointsr/montclair

There was a YAL chapter there when I was a student in 2011 / 2012. They hosted a panel with a democrat, a republican, and a libertarian. The democrat was MSU's own professor Grover Furr. The libertarian was someone from Russia, can't remember their name.

Anyway, I can't remember how this this topic even came up, but the conversation shifted to how Stalin was a brutal dictator (probably related to talking about communism) and Furr kept insisting it was all propaganda and he did nothing wrong. Meanwhile, the Russian guy grew up during the tail end of the Stalin regime and saw everything Furr insanely alleged didn't happen. Furr's even wrote books denying Stalin ever did anything. Great hire, MSU.

u/mjrdanger · 4 pointsr/space

Yes the book Dragonfly

u/helemaalnicks · 4 pointsr/politics

> Why are americans so anti Russia?

It's not just Americans, it's anyone who opposes kleptocracy and autocratic rule. If you're really interested, don't ask on reddit, read a book about it instead.

u/imphatic · 4 pointsr/worldnews

I hate that you are being downvoted because there is a very real possibility that this is true. This book is basically all about how manipulative the Russian government is and how their strategy is to create an environment where no one knows what is real or fake.

u/SlashFang · 4 pointsr/chernobyl
u/sipporah7 · 4 pointsr/suggestmeabook

I enjoyed "Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster." It has a good introduction to the science of what happened in the reactor, which I appreciated since I'm not a nuclear scientist.

u/Jango139 · 3 pointsr/conspiracy

This book: Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.

Fast-forward to the 90's-present day, Putin has been waging a non-stop propaganda offensive. The goal is to destabilize the internal population. The thing with propaganda is, is unless it is a complete fabrication (black), it comes with segments of truth in it.

u/sun_zi · 3 pointsr/Suomi

"All the Kremlin's men" on ihan hyvä kirja aiheesta.

u/PaedragGaidin · 3 pointsr/Christianity

I'm really into the late Roman Republic, naval history (especially the period between the US Civil War and the First World War, and the Second World War), and Russian history, especially the late Romanov/early Soviet era and the Cold War. Book recommendations:

  • Naval history. Just take a look here and go nuts. :P

  • Roman Republic. This may sound strange, but my favorite books about the late Republic aren't actually history books, they're the Masters of Rome series of novels by Colleen McCollough. They're really only semi-fictional, in that they take real events, real people, and the society they lived in, and fill in the gaps of what we don't know with (very plausible, well-written, and exhaustively researched) fictional narratives. The First Man in Rome is the first, and still my favorite out of all of them.

  • Russia. Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy (Russian Revolution, Civil War/War Communism, and early Soviet era). John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History. Both really great.
u/cassander · 3 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

read almost any book about any of the communist revolutions. Landlords were dispossessed en masse, workers seized factories. This did not usher in the new socialist man, the killing just lead to more killing as the revolution consumed its own, as they always do. The stories are depressingly repetitive.

u/mercurial_zephyr · 3 pointsr/DemocratsforDiversity

I definitely plan to! I might get it next. I'm reading The Great Terror, the classic study of Stalin's Purges right now.

I think the way the 60s are remembered in popular memory is really distorted. The Hippie movement was not nearly as popular as people seem to remember. And the youth conservative movement was also HUGE.

The '72 election was really a watershed. McGovern was portrayed as the candidate of "Abortion, Amnesty and Acid" LMAO

u/somercet · 3 pointsr/KotakuInAction

Please. This is not a broken legal system. If they had their way, this would read like the sicker parts of the show trials in Robert Conquest's The Great Terror.

u/MyShitsFuckedDown3 · 3 pointsr/AskHistorians

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

u/renewalnotice · 3 pointsr/politics

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.

u/FiggleJam · 3 pointsr/todayilearned

Read Voices From Chernobyl by Nobel Prize winning Svetlana Alexievich. Great account of what happened at Chernobyl.

u/RABlackAuthor · 3 pointsr/ChernobylTV

Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich is an oral history, and that makes it different from every other book on the subject. (It's also the only one written by a Nobel Prize winner.) Lyudmilla Ignatenko's part in the miniseries was largely taken from her story in this book, but there are more other stories than HBO would possibly have time for.

There are several new books giving a more historical/technical account of what happened, and I haven't had time to get any of them yet. But even if you get one of those, you should read this one, too.

u/SuperLemonz · 3 pointsr/MorbidReality
u/unsubinator · 3 pointsr/TrueChristian

Can I suggest reading something of the lives of the saints? Augustine's "Confessions" is pretty inocuous from a Protestant point of view. I really enjoyed Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux when I read it after my conversion.

Another good one to read, which I read before I re-converted (identified as a Christian again), was The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way.

Finally, I'm almost done with this book but it's awsome!!! If you can swing the price of the paperback it's probably better than the Kindle edition, but the Kindle edition is really affordable.

It's, Everyday Saints and Other Stories.

The Saints are the Gospel personified. They are they who the Church recognizes as having embodied Christ--lived the Gospel.

I also really got a lot out of this book: Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta

Hope some of this might help.

As Christians we have such a rich heritage.

u/jw101 · 3 pointsr/Christianity

>Meditation in the matter? Certain qualities and things to ponder upon?

Try the "Jesus prayer" and maybe check out this book

The way of the Pilgrim: and the Pilgrim continues on his way

I feel like I'm linking a lot of books to amazon lately, it really makes me wonder if people need books or not.

u/rdevitt21 · 3 pointsr/spaceflight

Red Moon Rising by Brzezinski is an engaging, novel-like quick read that dramatizes and summarizes the early space race. Side-by-side history of early US and Soviet space rocketry. Great stuff on the inheritance of the V-2 tech after WWII.
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Moon-Rising-Sputnik-Rivalries/dp/080508858X

Korolev by James Harford is about the man without whom the space race wouldn’t have happened. A bit dry (academic) at times, but a well researched book with lots of cool details from first-hand interviews. Korolev was a fascinating guy. An under-appreciated giant of the 20th century.
https://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-America/dp/0471327212

Starman by Pierce and Bizony on the meteoric rise and end of Yuri Gagarin. Very engaging. Read for the story of Komarov!
https://www.amazon.com/Starman-Truth-Behind-Legend-Gagarin-ebook/dp/B0052LUE80

Into That Silent Sea/In the Shadow of the Moon by French and Burgess. Another side-by-side. Great history from pre-Sputnik to Apollo, the moon, beyond. Lots of good stuff about individuals on both sides.
https://www.amazon.com/Into-That-Silent-Sea-Trailblazers/dp/080322639X/

Russian Wikipedia. Seriously, run it through Google’s page translate feature, keep a tab open for google translate so you can copy-paste search terms in Russian. Lots of extra info on RU Wikipedia vs EN Wikipedia.

Kamanin’s Diaries. Kamanin was a Red Army General that got assigned as personnel handler for the Cosmonauts. His diaries of the early days are probably the best primary source for and industry forged in a time of uber-secrecy. I haven’t found a full English translation.

English Summaries:
http://www.astronautix.com/k/kamanindiaries.html

Russian Language:
http://militera.lib.ru/db/kamanin_np/index.html



u/akuma_river · 3 pointsr/politics

Read the book: Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525562516/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_IvyNAbYVXBHYJ

u/DrPepperThanks · 3 pointsr/ukpolitics

[You're thinking of this book] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Everything-Forever-Until-More-Formation/dp/0691121176) Everything was forever until it was no more

u/kinderdemon · 3 pointsr/ArtHistory

Well if you like the Peredvizhniki: check out Vereschagin: he was a war artist, embedded with the troops and developing a really intense realistic form (I think of his as another Russian Courbet): e.g. Apatheosis, Road of the War Prisoners

Russia has had a long and turbulent artistic history in the last two or three centuries, and there is no one essence or spirit of an era or area. However, if you have specific questions I can answer them: Russian 20th century art is my area of expertise is (with an emphasis on the 1970s) I can probably recommend some good books ;)

What are you interested in specifically? Late 19th century? The avant-garde? Stalinism and socialist realism? Nonconformism and the underground? Natasha's Dance is a good cultural history of the 19th century and early 20th while Everything was Forever until it was no More is good on the post-war culture.

u/aezad · 3 pointsr/communism101

A name which is mentioned often here is Grover Furr; he recently published a book called "Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands Is False". If that title doesn't scare you away, check it out on amazon. There may be a .pdf floating around.

u/Hold_onto_yer_butts · 3 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

The guy they interview wrote Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, which goes into far more detail and is a whole lot of fun.

u/floydiannyc · 2 pointsr/history

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Tragedy-Russian-Revolution-1891-1924/dp/014024364X

Publisher's Note: Packed with vivid human detail and incident, British historian Figes's monumental social and political history spans Russia's entire revolutionary period, from the czarist government's floundering during the famine of 1891 to Lenin's death in 1924, by which time all the basic institutions of the Soviet dictatorship?a privileged ruling elite, random terror, secret police, torture, mass executions, concentration camps?were in place.

u/NewMaxx · 2 pointsr/worldnews

I recommend the books Russian under the Old Regime and A People's Tragedy to better understand the historical mindset of the average Russian. In modern times we have a good idea of the periods after these books - early to middle Stalinism, the USSR, and the most recent period. The roots of these all lie in a cascading history that really requires looking at the entire picture to properly understand. I responded to your comment specifically because an understanding of Russian regimes and its people throughout history gives much more perspective on how they react and why those reactions differ than those found in the West.

P.S. I'd argue that an oligarchy has existed in Russia since Stalin's death (it may even have contributed to it), much as it has in China after Mao's demise

u/musschrott · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

If you're interested in Trotzky, Project Gutenberg has three of his books, From October to Brest-Litowsk, Dictatorship and Democracy](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38982), and Our Revolution. His autobiografy (titled My Life) seems to still be in print with various publishers, and there's also the imho well-written more general treatise A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes (who is pretty controversial due to some of his personal failings).

u/amaxen · 2 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

I don't see how you're answering the OPs question though. Typically what happens in the classical Marxist revolutions is that the people in the main end up worse off than before. For example, read The People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924. Even Marxist historians like Hobbshawm concede it's one of the best histories of the revolution, and yet it's central theme (implied by the title) is that the revolution, regardless of who got scores settled, led to unending suffering and misery for the lowest of society.

u/LockeProposal · 2 pointsr/TheGrittyPast

I would most recommend Richard Pipes' The Russian Revolution, but Orlando Figes' A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 is a very close second. I have both and would almost recommend them equally.

Hope that helps!

u/TheUglyBarnacle42 · 2 pointsr/Russianhistory

If you want to study the Russian Revolution and have a lot of time on your hands, I'd recommend A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes. Extremely comprehensive but surprisingly easy to read.

u/KingCarnivore · 2 pointsr/russia

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924

Seems like you were asking more for contemporary history, but A People's Tragedy is a really good history of Russia immediately prior to the revolution, the revolution itself, the Transitional Government and the Civil War period. The general historical text is interspersed with the histories of players large and small, providing a personal lens for the turmoil and upheavals that Russia went through. The book shows how social forces and failure to reform by the monarchy made revolution an inevitability.

u/geosensation · 2 pointsr/WTF

I took a course in college on the Russian Revolution. The picture was in one of the books. http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Tragedy-Russian-Revolution-1891-1924/dp/014024364X

u/red_firetruck · 2 pointsr/The_Donald

Anybody who thinks Communism is okay needs to read this book. The only good Communist is a dead one. They are the enemy of individualism and freedom.

u/WalrusWarlord · 2 pointsr/Russianhistory

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

u/SpamFilterHatesMe · 2 pointsr/chernobyl

I bet some twitter feminists are gonna run crazy with this, like how man are only concern about their dick, toxic masculinity or shit like that.

But these things were actually used

http://www.m1key.me/photography/chernobyl_questions_answers_2/#09

> The men working on the roof of Chernobyl would wear ordinary cheap imitation-leather booth and what they called the egg basket - a lead protection for their testicles. It's not perfect but may help, although the Chernobyl Liquidators were not considered terribly appropriate partners after the disaster, as people feared genetic disease their offspring might have. [1]
>
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0312425848/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0312425848&linkCode=as2&tag=blogm1keyme-21

u/therealhorseturtle · 2 pointsr/NoFapChristians

Heh cool, i'm a snow boarder myself.

​

First, I do not think it's the weight of your sins that you're feeling. I think if any of us really felt the weight of even a single sin it would kill us immediately. Christ took those burdens for us on the cross and his work is finished...

​

I'm gonna para-quote Thomas Keating a semi-modern contemplative scholar, some will disagree with this... "If you feel bad for a sin that isn't on the level of murder, for more than a minute, it's neurotic sin guilt and it's not from God..."

​

Personally, I agree with this. Because guilt never produces fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22). In fact a huge part of overcoming fap isn't never fapping, it's not being so hard on yourself when you do... Because we fap in my presumption, when we're low in general, to falsely medicate our own every day mental health issues. Guilt never builds up, it only tears down, makes it harder to move forward again.

​

This is why when i was in the throes of it, i would binge. If i gave in once it was gonna be a 3xer in a single sitting type deal. This is why out the end of the week when i was exhausted and fighting with my girlfriend and stressed with work I didn't stand a chance.... Crash.... fap... Then i wouldn't wanna meditate or pray because i'd only have images of what I had watched and done in my mind. This is the act of sin-guilt creating EVEN MORE distance between myself and God... ugh...

​

9/10 Christian here worries about presuming forgiveness which is exactly what evil twists to it's advantage. Beating fap is about building oneself up, living a healthier and less stressful life in general. Taking good care of mind, body, and spirit. Guilt is not a part of this. We shouldn't fap because we know we're forgiven, that is presumption. But in an honest effort to quit it is indeed a chemical addiction, make no mistake. Chemical addictions take time to break and the guilt i think comes more from our upbringing and the stigma of society.

​

Yes it can twist into something truly devious in ways other sins may not, although all sin is completely destructive in the end.. But even St Augustine, inventor of concepts like original sin and The Trinity struggled with lust far into his old age, and is famous for praying ~"Lord make me chaste, but not yet"

​

We cannot make ourselves clean. Even when we beat fap we still have other sinful habits... anger, gossip, spiritual superiority, etc... So we will never be sin free and if you're guilty of a single sin, you're guilty of all (James 2:10). I'm not condemning you with this comment but for all of us, when we feel guilty it's faithlessness in our assured salvation in Christ.

​

---

​

So... There's what you're feeling and there's what to do about it... I learned the hard way when they say, don't meditate without a coach or advisor. This is because meditation can lead you into worse depression and even to suicide. And I was definitely headed in that direction.

​

Almost two years later I have yet to meet another Christian who really understands what it means to meditate and pray contemplatively. It's so sad because it was such a huge part of Christianity for so long but was seemingly lost as monasteries were shut down. The reformation went way to far in terms of nullifying experiential spirituality and the result is a bunch of people who don't know how to pray but they can quote theology with the best of them.

​

And now where are we, secular meditation apps abound and big tech is rolling out mindful meditation programs to their hordes of workers.

​

There are two tracks kind of... Western contemplative meditation coming from the Catholic church and from the Eastern orthodox we have instruction for constant prayer. Two sides of the same coin really, the literature written down throughout the last 2000 years is amazing. These studies is literally the study of psychology in a spiritual context, i've had a leading research psychologist / neuroscientist at a huge university, who was actually Buddhist, confirm this for me.

​

Interestingly enough, the Christians who championed meditation and prayer are known as Desert Christians. Why is this? Because before monasteries were a thing, they wondered around in the desert to model Christ. And these old crusty dudes have all of us sized up to a T when it comes to human suffering, passions, desires, motivation, ego, etc...

​

Some further historical context, the ancient hebrews and many other religions believed the deserts were where evil spirits live. Why did they think this? In my estimation it's because there's nothing to distract you from your own thoughts... whoa .... (lol)

​

So you can see if I've pieced it together well enough, meditating IS entering the desert. IT is the literal practice of facing down the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that people work so hard normally to avoid. And if you don't have coaching, practice, and guidance you'll get annihilated by them. I had all kinds of memories come back to me throughout my life and realized at each step how I had been wounded, taken on additional burden, not received support from my parents, etc... It was overwhelming and i had no idea what to do with myself.

​

But somehow I did persist and came out better on the other side although I wish I could find an advisor for myself. And when you get done facing your demons in the desert is when God can use you the most.

​

I still get anxiety and angry etc... But before it was an unfair fight i didn't know i was fighting... And would just get my butt kicked... Then it became a fair fight... And now by God's grace alone i'm on top gound n pound style (if you're the UFC as well).... When you can be at peace in the desert is when you can beat fap once and for all but in my opinion and much more importantly, become the person God made you to be.

​

So be careful. If this is your path, and all literature would say based on your curiousity it is, then commit to it. Doesn't mean you have to join a monastery but it should be a daily thing for you (takes time to develop of course), and you should always be pursuing further knowledge in the area.

​

I'll suggest a starter book each for tradition... and if you wanna keep in touch now or in the future i'd be down not cause i'm some yoda-dude but if you don't have anyone else, even an untrained pastor, then me just being a sounding board for what experiencing could be really beneficial to you and for me... Maybe i'd finally have a meditation buddy to chew the fat with:)

​

If not, i would totally understand as well!

​

Western: https://www.audible.com/pd/Into-the-Silent-Land-Audiobook/B00FPUZHQM?qid=1556390754&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=K1GE3VFBJ20CMQEFNT7E

​

Eastern: https://www.amazon.com/Way-Pilgrim-Continues-His/dp/0385468148/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+way+of+the+pilgrim&qid=1556390778&s=gateway&sr=8-2

​

Scriptural references: Exodus 14:14, psalm 46:10, Jeremiah 33:3, Psalm 23:2-3

​

Cheers!

u/Fandorin · 2 pointsr/OldSchoolCool

Russian book called Hidden Cosmos. The Russian wiki has a pretty good writeup, but it's in Russian.

Edit: Also, James Harford has a much more serious and concerning performance appraisal based on interviews in the 90s with retired Soviet (now Russian) flight planners in his book on Korolev. Here's a link to the book on Amazon, if you're interested in Soviet space history. Its excellent.

u/r00kie · 2 pointsr/HistoryPorn

I highly recommend reading Starman and Korolev they both really bring a lot of perspective to the cosmonaught program while really highlighting why it was such a cluster fuck of KGB involvement and soviet politics.

I gained enormous amounts of respect for both men after reading the books.

u/Boredeidanmark · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Try this

It’s not about just the Bolsheviks, but this was a fascinating book on the vast murder that took place in Eastern Europe in the 30s and 40s. Wash it down with something happy, I made the mistake of reading it back-to-back with this and became pretty depressed for a few weeks.

u/estrtshffl · 2 pointsr/communism101

The best marxist history book every year is awarded the Deutscher Prize - named after Isaac Deutscher who wrote a three vol. biography on Trotsky which I'm currently in the middle of reading.

Vol. 1

Vol. 2

Vol. 3

Also not Soviet history specifically, but Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein talks about the (forceful) liberalization of markets in Poland and Russia after the collapse of the USSR - which I found pretty great. Link

I also enjoyed Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick who is the current editor of the New Yorker and was the NYT's Moscow reporter during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but some people on the left for sure have problems with him. Link

Edit: Obviously each book is biased in its own way. Deutscher seems fair now but I am slightly worried it'll drift into hagiography. And obviously David Remnick is from an American's perspective in the late 80's - and everything that comes along with that.

u/ReQQuiem · 2 pointsr/belgium

A Nazi-apologist would already have been crucified at this point tbh. It's insane what Stalin/communist apologist can get away with in this current age, even in the academic world.

u/Goldberg31415 · 2 pointsr/space

Well the best place would be to start from technical side of things.
RPE by Sutton
https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Propulsion-Elements-George-Sutton/dp/0470080248

And Taming liquid hydrogen shows the problems of hydrolox that had to be solved to make lunar flight possible with rocket as small as SaturnV

https://www.history.nasa.gov/SP-4230.pdf

Russian N1 relied on kerosine and had only 1/2 the power of Saturn for TLI trajectory and that forced the design of their single person lander.

The historical perspective on the race is well shown in here https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Space-Race-Apollo/dp/0813026288

u/okbanlon · 2 pointsr/space

Dragonfly - I highly recommend it as well. Excellent, comprehensive book about Mir.

u/FreelanceSocialist · 2 pointsr/space

I haven't read too many that would fit the bill, but the first ones that come to mind are:

u/mydogsnameisbuddy · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Yeah it was! His book isn’t too bad either. I read that before the election and didn’t think it would ever be relevant. 🙄

Garry Kasparov’s book Winter is Coming is really good too.

u/uwjames · 2 pointsr/politics

Even if he isn't in Putin's pocket, Trump and his administration are totally out of their league. Hillarious how all the Trump supporters claim he is some sort of grand master. Putin is the real wiz.

Have you read Kasparov's book, "Winter is Coming."?

https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Coming-Vladimir-Enemies-Stopped/dp/1511365447

I actually haven't read it yet, but I've heard some great interviews with him.

u/ABoyOnFire · 2 pointsr/TheDarwinProject

Great to know!

Well lucky for you, that I am old! I'm actually quite a fan of him.

u/TheFoolishWit · 2 pointsr/politics

I think you're thinking of one particular book, which is really good: Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, by Peter Pomerantsev.

u/lhecht25 · 2 pointsr/news

No one is saying you shouldn't maintain your skepticism of the news, but there's a distinction to be made between news outlets, don't you think?

A news outlet that aspires to truth and one that aspires to propagandize shouldn't be falsely equated to one another.

Before claiming this is a false equivalence (or the opposite- claiming they are indeed similar enough to be equated) one should ensure there's substantial evidence supporting this claim. Otherwise the argument only serves to muddy the waters between news outlets.

There are some really dystopian consequences of removing all public trust in the media/press- imagine a country where everyone believes that Nothing Is True And Everything Is Possible.

u/AnotherBlueRoseCase · 2 pointsr/politics
u/elliptibang · 2 pointsr/changemyview

"Fake news" isn't an accurate or appropriate name for the problems you're describing. It's a term that was originally coined to pick out a very specific kind of social media-driven disinformation that's deliberately designed to undermine the credibility of authentic news providers. The fact that Trump and his supporters have succeeded in hijacking the concept and turning it against the mainstream media (which happens to be highly critical of Trump and his administration) is frankly kinda breathtaking.

Here's the reason why "fake news" recently entered the popular lexicon in such a big way:

>Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert
intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.”
Russia, like its Soviet predecessor, has a history of conducting covert influence campaigns focused on US presidential elections that have used intelligence officers and agents and press placements to disparage candidates perceived as hostile to the Kremlin.
>[...]
>Russia’s state-run propaganda machine contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.

That's not a conspiracy theory. It's from the official US Intelligence Community Assessment.

In this video, Senator Jack Reed questions James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, about the Russian influence campaign.

>REED: "One of the aspects of this Russian hacking was not just disseminating information they had exploited from computers, but also allegations of fake news sites, fake news stories, that were propagated. Is that accurate, or was that one aspect of this problem?"

>CLAPPER: "This was a multifaceted campaign. The hacking was only one part of it. It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news."

>REED: "Does that continue?"

>CLAPPER: "Yes."

A guy named Peter Pomerantsev wrote a very well-received book called Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible in 2014, right around the time of Russia's annexation of Crimea. You should read that, along with this in-depth article he wrote for The Guardian in April of the following year. Here's a representative excerpt:

>Late last year, I came across a Russian manual called Information-Psychological War Operations: A Short Encyclopedia and Reference Guide (The 2011 edition, credited to Veprintsev et al, and published in Moscow by Hotline-Telecom, can be purchased online at the sale price of 348 roubles). The book is designed for “students, political technologists, state security services and civil servants” – a kind of user’s manual for junior information warriors. The deployment of information weapons, it suggests, “acts like an invisible radiation” upon its targets: “The population doesn’t even feel it is being acted upon. So the state doesn’t switch on its self-defence mechanisms.” If regular war is about actual guns and missiles, the encyclopedia continues, “information war is supple, you can never predict the angle or instruments of an attack”.
>
>[...]
>
>Where once the KGB would have spent months, or years, carefully planting well-made forgeries through covert agents in the west, the new dezinformatsiya is cheap, crass and quick: created in a few seconds and thrown online. The aim seems less to establish alternative truths than to spread confusion about the status of truth. In a similar vein, the aim of the professional pro-Putin online trolls who haunt website comment sections is to make any constructive conversation impossible. As Shaun Walker recently reported in this newspaper, at one “troll factory” in St Petersburg, employees are paid about £500 a month to pose as regular internet users defending Putin, posting insulting pictures of foreign leaders, and spreading conspiracy theories – for instance, that Ukrainian protestors on the Maidan were fed tea laced with drugs, which led them to overthrow the (pro-Moscow) government.
>
>Taken together, all these efforts constitute a kind of linguistic sabotage of the infrastructure of reason: if the very possibility of rational argument is submerged in a fog of uncertainty, there are no grounds for debate – and the public can be expected to decide that there is no point in trying to decide the winner, or even bothering to listen.

It's important to understand that what we've been calling "fake news" isn't just fake news. It isn't The Onion or even The National Enquirer. It's something entirely novel: a potent new kind of propaganda, actively funded and deliberately steered by a hostile foreign power, delivered on a massive scale via open social media platforms that are uniquely vulnerable to it.

And it's working--not just in the US and the UK, but all over the Western world. The fact that you and so many others are prepared to dismiss credible news sources as "fake" and turn instead to unsourced, disreputable, thoroughly discredited conspiracy theories (e.g. the 4chan thing you mention) is proof of that.

u/texture · 2 pointsr/worldnews
u/DethFiesta · 2 pointsr/WayOfTheBern

> And did you know Healthcare is 1/6th of the economy?

Yes, if you didn't know this and you are commenting on health policy then you are an idiot.

> and voted Stein in the general.

Congrats. You handed Trump his win. The amount of votes going to Stein in the three states that unexpectedly put Trump over the top all received more Stein votes than Trump's margin of victory. I think Stein is right in a few areas but is for the most part a bonehead. And completely unelectable.

> If you cannot hear the war drums beating and almost the exact same trumped up, on wishy washy non-evidence like in the run up/(foist) to the Iraq War

What I hear is a reaction to Russia's obvious malfeasance and aggressive actions against our country.

You should probably just purchase this:

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

If you are pretending Russia isn't an aggressive actor bent on harming the US then you haven't been paying attention.

> I think Stein is even better than Bernie on foreign policy.

Who cares? She can't get elected.

u/Hiddenexposure · 2 pointsr/conspiracy

I just started reading this book about a high level Romanian, basically equivalent to our chief of staff, that defected to the US. It's called 'Disinformation' and so far I've found it to be fascinating.

http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604

u/aboutillegals · 2 pointsr/Intelligence

Markus Wolf, Man without a face About east german intelligence

Ion Pacepa, Red Horizons: The Extraordinary Memoirs of a Communist Spy Chief About rumanian intelligence in the communist era.

He also wrote the Kremlin's legacy, but that is more speculative and about the political changes, still a good book.

Pacepa has a trilogy: The Black Book of the Securitate from 1999, and recently (3 weeks ago) published: Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategy for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism, but I haven't read these, if anyone has an opinion on them, please share them here or in pm please!


U/animalfarmpig already mentioned Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, but you just can't stress enough the importance of that book, it discusses the very basics of analysis so well, that this should be the first anyone reads and if I may: this book should be at the very top of the suggested reading list.

u/Kh444n · 2 pointsr/unitedkingdom

http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting-Terrorism/dp/1936488604

Basically Russia started a campaign to convince Muslim countries that the US was run by Zionists and they were out to destroy Islam.

u/theeophilus · 2 pointsr/Catholicism

> When I see statements like this, it always reminds me of this excellent BBC article on Russian media tactics.

happy coincidence, comrade! as it turns out, i am russian disinformation agent. i guess jig is up, eh?!

i have no regret. please tell wife and children i love them and am sorry.

> By the way, if you liked that little blurb, you'll love Pomerantsev's entertaining book, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible.

i did like the blurb, and will be ordering the book. you may be interested to know that the title seems to be a variant on the alleged 'esoteric wisdom' of hassan-i sabbah (viz. "nothing is true, everything is permitted") as echoed in modern times by william s. burroughs, brion gysin, and the makers of assassin's creed.

if you enjoyed the bbc article and the book, you'll probably be a fan of:

The Increasingly Unhinged Russia Rhetoric Comes From a Longstanding U.S. Playbook - Greenwald, Feb. 23

Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism - Pacepa and Rychlak, 2013

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle - Hedges, 2009

> BBC article

no possible bias there, amirite?!

spez - phrasing

u/YourMumsKunt · 2 pointsr/The_Donald

This is actually a very easy question to answer for people who are "Really" informed on the subject. The reason the Islamic world and Jews hate each other, especially in modern times is due to a propaganda campaign by the USSR during the cold war. The Soviets spread a bunch of anti-Semitic material all over the middle east including Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They heavily pushed the conspiracy theory narrative that the Jews are some evil group trying to take over the world and that Jews were secretly in control of The United States and Europe, yada yada yada. Basically the same crap you will read on Storm Front and Nazi websites. The purpose of this entire Psy-Op was to turn the Middle East against Israel, The United States, and The West to weaken both the United States and the Middle East through constant war allowing the Soviets to destroy the west and the middle east when they were both weak. For more information I suggest you read the Book Disinformation by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa who was the highest ranked Soviet Intelligence officer to defect during the cold war.

https://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487880435&sr=8-1&keywords=disinformation

u/BurpingHamster · 2 pointsr/CombatFootage

Putin is stuck in a situation that has now grown out of his control. Everyone is in on the take and there is no way in sight to fix the problem. Too many layers of overlapping corruption.
Read, All the Kremlins Men by Michael Zygar.
https://www.amazon.com/All-Kremlins-Men-Inside-Vladimir/dp/1610397398

u/HahahahaWaitWhat · 2 pointsr/worldnews

It's not just regular misinformation, it's disinformation that has been deliberately spread by the Soviet government for decades. Check out this book if you'd like to know more. It was co-written by a former intelligence chief from communist Romania after he defected to the US.

u/amnsisc · 2 pointsr/pics

Bullshit. The USSR was not expansionist, whatever you want to say about it. The countries which became communist after WWII did so because of it. They would not have fallen under Soviet influence without the war. Furthermore, if you read narratives of the diplomatic engagements, Roosevelt, himself, was willing to give Stalin even more, while Churchill was reticent but ultimately willing.

The USSR had more than ten national languages. Stalin was Georgian. Kruschev was Ukranian. Many of the early leaders were Yiddish speaking Jews, Muslim Central Asians & so on. So the idea that they were Russophilic imperialists is also just plainly false.

The USSR was invaded as soon as it was founded by Germany who barreled on to within miles of its capital despite repeated attempts to sue for peace. In addition, the US invaded the USSR on its founding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force_Siberia) as did Greece, France, England & Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War). That is an all out assault, before it was ever even a unified state, before one could level any critique of it, before any policy. It was never given a chance. Had it been, they would have been less paranoid & militaristic. Many accounts of it describe this (https://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Paradoxes-1878-1928-Stephen-Kotkin/dp/0143127861

https://www.amazon.com/Ruling-Russia-Authoritarianism-Revolution-Putin/dp/0691169322

https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Fates-Lost-Alternatives-Stalinism/dp/0231148976

https://www.amazon.com/October-Russian-Revolution-China-Mi%C3%A9ville/dp/1784782777/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1502913444&sr=8-5&keywords=russian+revolution)

The USSR repeatedly called on Western powers to ally to defeat the Nazis as well as support the Spanish Republic. The Nazis wanted to rule the world & eliminate the entire Russian subcontinent.

u/Meadow_Foxx64 · 2 pointsr/socialism

The obvious choices would be Rosa Luxemburg's The Russian Revolution or Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. Victor Serge's Year One of the Russian Revolution is also a classic.


Some other good, and more contemporary, suggestions are China Mieville's October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. Mieville is a member of the e International Socialist Organization and is an active participant in many leftist political political movements. Whether or not he is a Leninist, I am not sure. Neil Faulkner wrote a book called A People's History of the Russian Revolution. Neil Faulkner is a Marxist historian, and as the title indicates, it is presented from a leftist perspective. A bit off topic, but Faulkner has also written the great A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals — which covers not only the Bolsheviks, but human history in its entirety. Once again, from a Marxist point-of-view.

To conclude — and since you mentioned "relatively light" — I'll also recommend The Russian Revolution, published in Sutton's "Pocket History" series. The author — Harold Shuckman — has written much about the history of 20th century communism, however, I am not aware if he does or does not,himself, support any sort of socialist ideas.

Out of all these, Rosa's work is probably the most difficult. So if you were looking for light material, Faulkner or Mieville would be, in my view, your 'go-to's'.

u/conspirobot · 1 pointr/conspiro

Hiddenexposure: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link

I just started reading this book about a high level Romanian, basically equivalent to our chief of staff, that defected to the US. It's called 'Disinformation' and so far I've found it to be fascinating.

http://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting/dp/1936488604

u/LordPigSnake · 1 pointr/Intelligence

thanks, that exactly the book i want. i also found some Disinformation by ex-Romanian spy chief Paceca:
https://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting-Terrorism/dp/1936488604

u/Hollow_Fangs · 1 pointr/The_Donald

> If you knew me, you would know that I lived in many more countries and varied conditions than you did

Let me just state the same: If you knew me, you would know that I lived in many more countries and varied conditions than you did

> Anyway, there are much worse places than where you live, even in France.

One thing I know for sure is that you've never been to Russia. Otherwise you wouldn't be spouting such nonsense.

> whether you stay in Russia or decide to move to place you deem better. May be you are right, may be it does exist.

Oh, I'm not moving anywhere, I'm gonna stay here and try to change things. One good thing about Russia is that intersectionality and political correctness (in it's Western, "your-breathing-is-offensive-misogynic-and-oppressing" sense) are completely alien concepts here. And unlike their Western counterparts who glorify Marx and Lenin, the majority of our hipsters adore Ayn Rand and libertarianism.

> Here's some first class reading for you. It provides excellent background on the west.

I will read it. And since we're doing book suggestions here are mine:

https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Coming-Vladimir-Enemies-Stopped/dp/1610397193/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Without-Face-Unlikely-Vladimir/dp/1594486514/ref=la_B001H6MBXK_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1525652656&sr=1-2

https://www.amazon.com/Day-Oprichnik-Novel-Vladimir-Sorokin/dp/0374533105/ref=la_B001JOLA4G_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1525652758&sr=1-1

The first two are political/historical nonfiction books, written by people who had first-hand experience with Putin's regime.

The third one is a novel, but many of the things and ideas depicted there has come/are coming to life in Russia right now, unfortunately. Orwell's 1984 and Burgess' 1985 (read it too, by the way, great book) are good descriptions of what's going on in the West and where it is headed with its leftist ideology. And this Vladimir Sorokin's book does the same for Russia.

So do me a favor and read these three books (and do check out "1985", I'll say it again - great book). And I'll read your book as soon as I finish "Journey to the End of the Night".

u/DontDoEvil · 1 pointr/worldpolitics

>White supremacists’ Alexander Dugin links are no secret

FTFY

Alexander Dugin's philosophy doesn't mean Russia has a strategy for a Nazi Reich.

Jeffrey Mankoff is the neocon trying persuade people that Dugin is part of Putin's inner circle.

Mankoff should read All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin by Mikhail Zygar.

Alexander Dugin's National Bolshevik Party is banned in Russia FFS.

u/oceanparallax · 1 pointr/JordanPeterson

You should read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Tragedy-Russian-Revolution-1891-1924/dp/014024364X

Further, you should pay more attention to what Peterson has to say. No matter how many Jews were involved in some movement, you should be paying attention to the ideas and values people espouse as individuals, rather than the groups they can be placed in. In the thread above it is the other guy who comes across as more reasonable, more attentive to the actual evidence, and more consistent with the values that Peterson espouses.

u/vorboto · 1 pointr/socialism

Just started "A People's Tragedy" and so far its feels straight forward, not overtly overly biased.
The preface/introduction it says it is aiming to cover time period ~1860's-1924 and begins with a more general overview of some of the various forces at play and how they fit into and feed into each other.
Its split into 4 parts:

  1. Russia under the Old Regime
  2. Crisis of Authority (1891-1917)
  3. Russia in Revolution (1917-1918)
  4. The Civil War and the Making of the Soviet System (1918-1924)
    Mentions he will use the lives of various people to help tell the history including Sergei Semenov and General Brusilov.
    The book is a bit a tome.
    https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Tragedy-Russian-Revolution-1891-1924/dp/014024364X
u/microcline · 1 pointr/books

I just started reading this last night, so I can't tell you whether or not I like it, but it was recommended to me by someone who knows Russian history:

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924

u/here1am · 1 pointr/nonfiction_bookclub

I've read a book about her long time ago, must say that I truly enjoyed it very, very much. After that, naturally Peter the Great. His life was interesting too. Amazing how he wanted to learn from the west and how the latest Russian tzar hated the very idea of modernizing Russia before it was too late.

ATM, I am contemplating this book: A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, should I go with it?

u/Qwill2 · 1 pointr/norge

Holder på med A People's Tragedy - The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 av Orlando Figes. Grundig. Jeg liker det.

u/satanic_hamster · 1 pointr/CapitalismVSocialism

> I'm curious as to what the communists on this sub all think about the large scale purges of 1937/38 and the subsequent deportation of these mostly 'political' prisoners (but there were common criminals as well) to labor camps across Siberia and Chukotka, Priamur, etc.

> I can't really call myself a Trotskyite or a Stalinist to be honest, certainly I see them as vermin, but the nature of these purges have always seemed so ridiculous to me. The totally random and obtuse method of rounding up intellectuals for non-existent conspiracies so as to fulfill regional quotas is so ridiculous that its almost funny, until the actual circumstances become apparent. After spending years in prisons alone or with a cellmate the political prisoners were sent to hellish labor camps where a culture exists that makes Lord of the Flies look like teletubbies... Women are ubiquitously raped (often 'in concert' as the criminals there refer to gang rape...) by every level of camp administration - who due to this luxury often have syphilis - and 'common criminals' who include everything from thieves and murderers to child molesters(mao's influence) and rapists are not considered 'enemies of the people' and so receive special treatment.

> The lives of political prisoners becomes a slow and humiliating march to death. These people are often dedicated communists, specialists, intellectuals, peasants, workers - they come from all sectors of society and are worked to death in a senseless fashion. Slave labor is so obviously ineffective, especially when the slaves are not properly fed or clothed in -70 degree weather.

Don't know what exactly you're looking for us to discuss. It's important to highlight that the Great Purge is simply a name given to the phenomenon of mass executions/murders around 1937-1938. My understanding from historians that study it, is that no one really knows why it started or what the impetus behind it actually was, but that for some reason, mass executions started occurring in somewhat obscure patterns throughout this period. Despite that overview however, there are some commonly held opinions among them about why it happened. Personally the best resource (although there are multiple sources) I've read is this.

> Couldn't these people have been put to better uses?

Sure.

> And what of the thousands who simply starved due to miscalculations and ridiculous expectations, resorting to cannibalism en masse, etc?

What about them?

> I am of the sincere opinion that the purges and camps sewed the seeds for the USSR's destruction. How could anyone who experienced those purges or was connected to them, not feel betrayed and hopeless?

That actually has virtually nothing to do with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

> Anyway, average commies, convince me that this was all good fun and that the revolution required the decimation of educated specialists.

No socialist/communist I know defends this. I think somewhere in there, you have the popular misconception about who/what we are. The Soviet Union wasn't remotely communist. In name sure, but not much else.

u/mrpithecanthropus · 1 pointr/AskHistorians

I confidently predict that you are going to get a lot of politically motivated responses to this question and that they will all be removed. To get the ball rollling hopefully in the right spirit, I would recommend the works of Anglo-American historian Robert Conquest. He wrote extensively about the Soviet Union and the impact of collectivisation, Stalinism etc at time when the jury was still out. His most famous work was The Great Terror.

u/blerghHerder · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

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.

u/BigMrJWhit · 1 pointr/Cortex

My personal favorite non-fiction books that sound incredibly boring, but are actually really interesting:

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky It's a book about salt! The history of salt, the cultural significance of salt, salt production through the ages, all about salt. It's amazing.

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky It's the history of Cod! The author spends a good portion of the book talking about how Cod is both incredibly bland and tasteless, but also how western culture loves that bland fish and all of the interesting political movements for Cod.

And for a more serious topic: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich. This is multiple personal accounts of the Chernobyl disaster, all deeply interesting, and deeply sad. I'm only an episode into the Chernobyl HBO series, but I'm pretty sure that show is following some of characters from this book. It's a high quality book that I think is worth everyone's time, it doesn't go super in depth with the technology, just the human aspect.

u/kmkz13 · 1 pointr/AskReddit

radiation poisoning...

pages six through twenty-three

Wife of Firefighter from Chernobyl's Story

u/grantgardner · 1 pointr/pics

Unfortunately even the chemical warfare suits weren't the norm for many liquidators during the early months. Many of them just had long sleeves on, or only masks.

Additionally, it was rare to actually see them wearing anything like this, because the danger wasn't fully understood, and summer in the region is exceptionally hot and humid.

For further reading, I highly recommend Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, by Svetlana Alexievich
https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Chernobyl-History-Nuclear-Disaster/dp/0312425848#

u/KSW1 · 1 pointr/OrthodoxChristianity

Is this a good translation?

u/IrishWaterPolo · 1 pointr/AskHistorians

Most of the wikipedia links are to airplanes or rockets, because wikimedia is an easy reference for pictures. Non-wikipedia sources are included in each comment, below are some others.

[Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon] (http://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-America/dp/0471327212/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=41ZjHiVXSTL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR106%2C160_&refRID=0VVV61Y70PS29GB1J8WY)

[The Politics of Space : a Comparison of the Soviet and American Space Programs] (http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Space-Comparison-American-Programs/dp/0841901856/ref=sr_1_1_twi_unk_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449700911&sr=1-1&keywords=The+politics+of+space+%3A+a+comparison+of+the+Soviet+and+American+space+programs)

[Eisenhower and the Cold War Arms Race: 'Open Skies' and the Cold War Arms Race] (http://www.amazon.com/Eisenhower-Cold-War-Arms-Race/dp/1780762798/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449701131&sr=1-1&keywords=Eisenhower+open+skies+arms+race)

The next one is not a book, but a journal article from the peer reviewed Journal of American History:

The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space.


Happy reading :)

u/Cuw · 1 pointr/politics

Yes. Both Pence and Trump will be implicated the second Flynn goes down. There is no way they can make the case that they didn’t know about Flynn’s Russia connections and his sons Russia backed conspiracy theories.

I honestly wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that Mueller already has a strong case against Trump. There is just too many financial crimes that were in the open before you even dabble into collusion. I’m currently reading the book Collusion and there is just so much Trump did with Russia since the 80s.

To put things into perspective the USSR was using Trump as an asset in the 80s. He used his casinos and properties to clean oligarch’s money in the 90s and 2000s. And of course he colluded with Russia to win an election.

u/cb_hanson_III · 1 pointr/investing

Yes, here you go. I'm buying it for everyone on my gift list this year.

u/OfficeBrowser · 1 pointr/worldnews

I'm reading Collusion by Luke Harding right now. The book goes in some crazy details.

Link for Muricans: https://www.amazon.com/Collusion-Secret-Meetings-Russia-Helped/dp/0525562516/

u/The_Thane_Of_Cawdor · 1 pointr/AskHistory

If you are truly interested I would read this book

https://www.amazon.com/Lenins-Tomb-Last-Soviet-Empire/dp/0679751254

> he lets the system's defects speak for themselves: the corruption, the reckoning with the Gulag, the trivial self-seeking of the apparat, the failure of social safeguards (for example, against homelessness) and much more. Even these are not described and weighed in a formal sense. The scale and nature of the corruption emerges from the tale of the Remnicks' nanny, who to bury her mother had to bribe everyone from the scheduler of funerals to the grave digger and, in the end, pay a sum equal to three months' wages. At the other end of the spectrum stands the regional Uzbek party leader who lived in a vast estate with peacocks, lions, thoroughbred horses and concubines. Thus each of the dimensions of the problem and of Gorbachev's answer is revealed.

u/Waterproof_Moose · 1 pointr/history

As a journalist, Remnick really captures a lot of what went on. But short answer? The economy collapsed.

This, in my opinion, is the best book on the topic.

u/moofdivr · 1 pointr/politics

>I suppose if you consider the fall of Soviet Communism as a "waste", then I suppose you'd be right saying SDI was a waste as well. Although, I'm well aware of the Left-wing love and pining for the Soviet Union.

Yes, we all love and pine for a failed state. So we're going to go with the narrative that Democrats are somehow communist? Haha ok buddy, that'll sure work on anyone even remotely intelligent. In all seriousness though, claiming that Reagan and his military spending were the root cause of the fall of the USSR merely proves how very ignorant you are on the subject. Read this Remnick' novel if you actually want to learn about Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Perestorika, and why exactly all the satellite states pulled out of the union (you know, the actually reasons for its fall). We both know you won't let these facts get in the way of your narrative however.

u/idioma · 1 pointr/technology

I could offer you a reading list to elucidate my points about Russia and the negatives of imperialism within burgeoning industrialist society. Right now however, I'm actually very stretched thin. I'm on a business trip that looks like will now be extended. I'm working just under 100 hours per week now that I've inherited two more projects that were supposed to be assigned to others. It's kind of a cop-out to not further expand on my earlier statements. But since I don't perceive you as being particularly close-minded (if anything you seem appropriately honest about what you do and do not know) it might actually be beneficial to simply provide you with the data as it was presented to me, and then let you draw your own conclusions.

For starters I'd recommend reading about the history:

http://www.amazon.com/Russia-Russians-History-Geoffrey-Hosking/dp/0674011147

This book gives a very wide-angle approach to Russia, Russians, and their governments.

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Forever-Until-More-Formation/dp/0691121176/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c

This book offers a bit more of an intimate perspective about perhaps the most relevant generation of Post-Soviet influence.

http://www.amazon.com/Blowback-Second-Consequences-American-Empire/dp/0805075593

This book offers some insight into America's foreign policy during the 20th century. In particular the negative impact of crafting foreign policy through an aggressive campaign of global occupation. The latter chapters talk about China and the former Soviet Union and draws many disturbing parallels with the United States defense spending habits in the last decade.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/B004HZ6XWS/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300861749&sr=1-2

This book will perhaps be the most controversial read out of the list. It deals with the very unfortunate relationship between corporatism and American politics as well as the various stages of civil rights and labor movements. There is also a great deal of additional facts about imperialism in America which expands many of the points made by Chalmers Johnson.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Means-Libertarian-Charles-Murray/dp/0767900391/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300861920&sr=1-1

There are several areas of agreement in this book between the views expressed by Chalmers Johnson and Howard Zinn. While the principles certainly come from different places, there is a well-reasoned, and thoughtful common ground. It is challenging from any perspective to completely agree or disagree with these narratives, but the contrast is most refreshing.

http://www.amazon.com/Pig-That-Wants-Eaten-Experiments/dp/0452287448/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300862132&sr=1-1

This book is basically a breath mint. The subjects being tackled in the rest of these books can often be somewhat troubling. This book will offer you short thought experiments that will prove entertaining as well as provocative. They will also help provide some lightheartedness to the mix.

u/_Tuxalonso · 1 pointr/announcements

That book literally sources Ukranian nazi collaborators as outlined in this book

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Lies-Evidence-Accusation-Bloodlands/dp/0692200991

u/kavabean2 · 1 pointr/ChapoTrapHouse

No data. No references. I'm not just going to take your word for it because you had some tough times in Eastern Europe, you've read a bunch of propaganda, and you've found a boogeyman to blame.

As if being from a country makes you invulnerable to state propaganda and stupid beliefs. All those Trump supporters in the south are damn sure it's liberal values and immigrants that are causing all their problems.

My ex-partner was Russian. She grew up in the shit post-Gorbachev era but her parents grew up under Communism and were very clear about the superiority of their pre-capitalism life to their current life in most of the important aspects (housing, job security, health care, affordable food). a massive poll taken by Pipes and other references shows this is a completely widespread opinion in Russia.

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/1ic9x9/are_the_people_of_the_former_sovietrepublics_more/

This is not about Soviet Union worship but instead is about rational differential analysis. The Soviet Union did a lot wrong but they did many things well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktcrhP9lhjI&t=0s&index=7&list=PLuvfJrv9EZd4WVEKSvviHVbfudakCqXqe

What they did not do is kill the numbers of people that Western propaganda claimed, and it wasn't as cruel, heartless, and despotic as has been claimed. Yes, there was a famine in Ukraine but it wasn't man-made and far less people died than is claimed (500,000-1,000,0000 i.e. far less than Volga famine where almost all fake pictures were from). Yes there were purges but they were almost certainly less than 200,000, not the millions claimed, and the counterrevolutionary forces that were killed were predominantly real enemies. Life in the gulags was very hard and could be fatal but mortality was not extraordinary compared to other work-prisons from the time. The best book that debunks the main myths is Blood Lies.

What actually happened in the Soviet Union is important both because (1) false information and propaganda about the USSR is constantly used to attack Marxism and communism and any system besides capitalism. As such the statistical details and multiple-source-corroborated facts are critical to all who want to overthrow capitalism; and (2) because the actual facts are critical in order to know exactly what went wrong. If we think Stalin was a Hitler-like Psychopath instead of a talented organiser and engineer running a system that was guaranteed to re-stratify then we don't know how to fix what went wrong.

I don't care where you are from. You can testify to your own experiences but your opinion on larger Soviet history is irrelevant without providing sources.

u/Lurkndog · 1 pointr/space

I don't know about a documentary, but there are two good history books by Asif Siddiqi on the Soviet space program:

u/MayTheTorqueBeWithU · 1 pointr/spaceporn

If the Shuttle/Mir era interests you, Dragonfly is a must-read. It has a lot of inside stories of the people involved, and is a great technical and human drama.

http://www.amazon.com/Dragonfly-NASA-And-Crisis-Aboard/dp/0887307833

u/futtigue · 1 pointr/space

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0887307833

Bryan Burrough.

A lot of the book covers the politics of the joint Russian/American missions to the ageing MIR, but I read it for the firsthand accounts of the MIR fire and Progress collision and wasn't disappointed.

u/BroomShakzuka · 1 pointr/politics

In a recent episode of Sam Harris' podcast Garry Gasparov (former world chess champion and political activist) predicted this very trend: https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-putin-question Gasparov actually wrote a book about Putin that is now high on my reading list: https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Coming-Vladimir-Enemies-Stopped/dp/1511365447

u/Holmes02 · 1 pointr/politics

Currently reading Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev just to learn how Trump's administration will attempt to use propaganda to get away with pretty much everything.

Edit: I'm not the only one. Paperback is sold out on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Edit 2: u/Deggit peaked my interest with this book from this comment

u/BaconBlasting · 1 pointr/politics

If nothing is true, anything is possible.

It's straight out of Putin's playbook.

u/Unimagi · 1 pointr/ussr

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

I'm not saying this is 100% everybodys experience or this is only book you shold read but I liked this book. This is written by somebody who is from west and goes to russia for work right after USSR collapsed.

u/YouTwistedWords · 1 pointr/television

Nothing is true, everything is possible.

Yes you should be skeptical. Of course that includes the claims I am making.

u/AUSinUSA · 1 pointr/conspiracy

I would have agreed with you until I read this book. Now I think Putin is worse than he seems on TV.

u/Morfolk · 1 pointr/ukraine

> All media is full of shit: Belgian, US, Russian and Ukranian.

This is exactly how propaganda machine gets you: Nothing Is True Everything Is Possible

While no media can provide an ideal and detailed account of any event, there is a huge difference between a source that gives you 90% truth with some omitted details and a source that gives you 10% of truth and a bunch of specifically created lies like Russian state-controlled media does.

u/__JonnyG · 1 pointr/ukpolitics

No we really aren't. If you're willing to influence an election illegally that's the ultimate insider information. Trading is about calculating risk and reward. Even I as a remainer I could see the value of shorting £ as a hedge. If I knew I could corrupt the campaign I would of invested a lot more! Excuse me for my shortness but you just aren't paying attention. I have given evidence relentlessly on here and you know what? No one listens or even looks at it. So sorry but it's easy find the truth with evidence and see whats happening right now. It's right there if you want to see it. There's plenty of people writing about it.

The billionaire "conspiracy" is a conspiracy in as much as very real people are conspiring to make that a reality hence wealthcare bills in US and tax haven UK. The British tabloid press share foreign weaponised clickbait aimed at weakening our democracy. Their goal? To weaken government and deregulate. It's about billionaires buying up as much of our democracies as quickly as possible. Brexit and Trump is much like how Putin turned Russia into a Kleptocracy.

Some of my sources will require buying and reading entire books. Old school I know.

u/jcl4 · 0 pointsr/AskReddit

Idiotic. Go and clean up the mess, or live nearby. Then come back and tell me how great nuclear is. Read this book, then tell me you're pissed that people are alarmed by nuclear energy.

All the bullshit, nerding around about wattage return per material/cost invested means shit when your organs are oozing out of your body and your loved ones aren't allowed to stay in the same room with you. Not only is it a false dilemma, ("we gotta risk safety to meet our consumption", or the more ridiculous "it's not bad because it's not as bad as other things"), it's the kind of retarded thinking that only intellectuals find comfort in.

u/ExquisitExamplE · 0 pointsr/evilbuildings

> face up to your ignorant biases and change them

You know, I'd advise you the same.

>This is a masterful, almost line-by-line demolition/refutation of a mass-market-popular book on Stalin and the Soviet Union. The refutations are joined with replacing the lies, distortions and errors (with the "errors" inescapably of sheer, wanton negligence, since they are so repeated) with what actually happened as documented reliably in the scholarship of others.

>The author, Grover Furr, beginning most prominently with an earlier book Kruschev Lied, refuting the litany of lies told by Nikita Kruschev in his "secret speech", decided enough was enough and has embarked on a second career beside being an accomplished medieval historian of systematically repudiating the vast cannon of accepted Anglo/US historical narrative of the USSR.

>What is interesting is how thoroughly dishonest the book that is being refuted is. Major assertions of the author of the book being examined are either shown to be without documentation of any kind, "documented" by distorting or mischaracterizing the source cited, or in innumerable instances when the author of the book Furr is refuting actually does cite a source in support of an assertion he makes, the cited authors themselves have provided no evidence or no sources or the source they cited has not provided any evidence.

>In addition, often there is nothing on the subject on the page or pages cited, whereas in the cited source where the topic is addressed at all, it is contradictory to the assertion made by the refuted author! Mind-boggling.

>The western narratives on agricultural collectivization by the Soviet Union, the "Holomodor", the pact with Nazi Germany, "The Great Terror", the Katyn Forest massacre to name a few are all thoroughly debunked. Determine what historians have criticized Blood Lies and know they are condoning historical malpractice and malfeasance on an a massive scale practiced in a thoroughgoing way.

Even more amusing was, looking at Carr's wiki, we find this illuminating tidbit-

>Furr has also received some negative attention from a number of American conservative media outlets. David Horowitz listed him as one of the "101 most dangerous academics in America", and criticizes him for believing that "it was morally wrong for the United States to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union".

It's all pretty much right there. So who're you pulling for in the 2020 presidential race? I'm sure you can guess my preferred candidate.

u/mandarinorange22 · -5 pointsr/AskThe_Donald

I think it's telling that your post references one man's take on Soviet history and your take on "world" history, but that none of your post references the realities of the America that we live in. I wonder: how you would use these ideas to explain why median white home value was nearly 30 times higher than median black home value post-financial crisis? Perhaps you would tell me it's because black people are too lazy and too violent (like the rest of us, right?) to hold down a job. But, not putting words in your mouth: I think you're peddling myths and truisms – not facts – pretty outrageously in what you wrote alone.

If you're interested in subversion through media, check out Peter Pomerantsev's book on contemporary Russia and Putinism. They're our friends now, I guess, so be careful of what you criticize: https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006