(Part 2) Top products from r/russia

> this subreddit does seem to be very anti-west though

I think (just a guess) it's because a lot of people feel antagonized.

>i wouldn't say most people in the west hate russia,

Yeah, for sure. It varies.

>i'm one of these people

No dude, you're not. I think it's pretty clear you don't hate Russia or Russians. You are totally welcome here. I'm talking about disingenuous people with a sincere hate for Russia.

>Thanks

Nothing will give you a completer picture, and you're free to make up your own mind why Soviets liked the Soviet Union. If you're really interested about the subject, read about it. If you're bored on a train or plane or talking to a boring person there's really nothing better than a good book.

Personally I like this book The Road to Stalingrad. Check it out at the library or something. There's a lot of interesting events in Russian history. The contrast between the right-wing anti-Semitic 90% illiterate hardcore Christian Russian Empire and the atheist USSR is pretty funny, imo.

Well of course the first place to start would be Wikipedia. You could look up:

1936 Soviet Constitution, Gosplan, five year plans, collectivization, kolkhoz, Gulags, the Virgin Lands campaign, TASS, Izvestia, Pravda, Elektronika, their incredible space program, etc. And of course the leaders. And the various republics (SSRs) would be good to know. In fact the country itself was CCCP = SSSR.

Read about all the post-collapse conflicts: Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Chechnya, Transnistria, Russia-Georgia war, Ukraine Crisis. And about how turbulent the 90s were.

There are personal accounts of the gigantic conflict with the Germans, like those of Vasili Grossman and Marshal Zhukov. There are transcripts of interviews with Khrushchev and the books that Gorbachev wrote on Glasnost and Perestroika. Historian David M. Glantz writes almost exclusively about the Soviet military. There are the accounts of dissidents like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.

There are some classic pieces of literature like Master and Margarita and Dr. Zhivago. And music on YouTube by people like Shostakovich.

There are surplus stores like Soviet-Power.com that sell helmets, medals, coins, busts, and the like if that is what you are into. And blogs like English Russia.

r/history here on reddit probably has some articles to peruse. r/HistoryPorn often has old Russian photos.

And of course I've talked to several people on this forum who lived during Soviet times. I'm sure some here or elsewhere on reddit would be happy to tell you.

Damn! I used to love маковый рулет! Wonder is you can order some off Amazon?

Edit: Answering own question —> https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07DWF7LSN/

Leonov is also an accomplished painter, and painted himself doing it.

and a different painting

For English speakers he wrong an account of his amazing spacewalk and other expereinces in a book he cowrote with American Astronaut David Scott.

You may be interested in this book

http://www.amazon.com/Russias-Sputnik-Generation-Indiana-Michigan-European/dp/025321842X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414439236&sr=8-1&keywords=sputnik+generation

It's on amazon too. https://www.amazon.com/Messing-Enemy-Surviving-Terrorists-Russians/dp/0062795988 (note the wording in the link).

Ah, this is the book - https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Antony-Beevor/dp/0316023752

try this book. a good introduction to the script

The source is cited right there you fucking idiot. Such a tool that you'll believe whatever you want without even looking into it. You got a source that discredits it or anything intelligent whatsoever, put it forward. Otherwise, fuck off

The Coming War with Japan

What seems a long time ago, I read this book:

Secrecy: The American Experience

by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The entire area has extremely weak legislative underpinnings, too much overlap, and powerplayer battles involving too much internal strife.

In other words, it's a mess.

Remember the Tsarnaev Bros and the Boston Marathon?

Incompetents!

\> They crushed Poland in a month. They did the same with France. They seem to have this insane military with careful and tactical planning, so why was Operation Barbarosa such a failure?

​

Barbarossa's primary objectives were:

​

1. Decisive defeat of RKKA. Decisive in terms of WWII meant 'no continuous frontline, just some isolated pockets of resistance, no centralized C&C, demoralized leftovers of the army'.
   
2. Take both capitals of USSR - Moscow and Leningrad
   
3. Advance to the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line and them keep it
   
   At several points during 1941-42 Wehrmacht was close to achieving any 2 out of 3, never close to all 3.
   
   RKKA was much more numerous than any of previous opponents of Wehrmacht. By June 22, 1941 it was 5 million strong. However, it ballooned in size too fast (doubled in size since 1939) to have enough well-trained officers and NCOs.
   
   ​
   
   Red Army in 30s innovated in military science - Triandafilov, Isserson, Svechin etc. have developed the theory of Deep Battle (Глубокая Операция) which was on par with german strategy of Blitzkrieg ( better known to germans as Bewegungskrieg and Auftragstaktik ).
   
   ​
   
   Meanwhile France was still clinging to strategy and tactic from WWI (stagnation often happens with victorious side), Poland was following France and Great Britain in their military doctrine, had much weaker army.
   
   ​
   
   In first month of Barbarossa Wehrmacht sustained more losses than in whole French campaign. That gives an idea how stiff resistance was even in most successful period of Barbarossa. Note that in 1939 French army was universally called the strongest army in the world by military press - and Red Army was not taken seriously at all.
   
   ​
   
   USSR specifically prepared for industry mobilization and evacuation (although that plan was almost scrapped). It also possessed enough territory to move industry out of harm's way (i.e. beyond bombing range). Neither France nor Poland could do that (for various reasons). OKW (German military staff) underestimated USSR resilience and overestimated Wehrmacht's capabilities - in other words, it wasn't that strong vs RKKA.
   
   ​
   
   It's impossible to examine all factors that led to Barbarossa's demise here. If you are interested, read D. Glantz books.
   
   These two books would answer most of your questions:
   
   
4. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Modern War Studies)
   
   
5. Operation Barbarossa: Hitler's Invasion of Russia 1941

Putin is far from perfect but killing democracy in Russia is not a crime he is guilty of.

Actually democracy never existed.
Yeah, that pretty much contradict "naive" view of most western media but if you try some more unbiased sources or just plain history textbook you will just see it:

• It was a vote whether USSR should be disbanded or not and 77 percent of the people said it should be preserved. This was ignored by Gorbashev and his company.
  
  
• In 1993 Eltsyn moved tanks on the streets and shoot the White House where Russian parliament resided then then tension between them arose. Some people who protected White House was murdered.
  
  
• Later Eltsyn and his company, (so called Family) probably forged results of the presidential elections in 1996. The crimes of Eltsyn and his "Family" are numerous and you could read about them in the book of "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia" http://www.amazon.com/Godfather-Kremlin-Berezovsky-Looting-Russia/dp/product-description/0156013304
  by Russian Forbes editor Paul Khlebnikov.
  
  
• During Eltsyn era opposition was under much more serious pressure, for example, son of one of the opposition leaders got his fingers cut in the middle of the day. That was son of Yavlinsky leader of the Yabloko party. btw, his son was a promising young pianist.
  
  I've just briefly outlined some interesting parts of modern Russian history to give you some perspective.
  
  
  
  So why the difference? Why media praises Eltsyn and Gorbashev and bashes Putin? The two major sins Putin is really guilty of in eyes of the some western politicians and journalists are ambition and ability. Those qualities both of them lacked miserably.
  
  Yep, Putin is not saint and I personally will not vote him, through in my eyes he is not
  and evil monster some media pictures him nor an evils dictator or neo-hitler. From my point of view he is just a man with his positive and negative sides, a politician I will not vote for.

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.

Thanks, ill be sure to send you a link once I finish the project this summer. The project is my chosen thesis project for graduate school and my professor is thrilled someone is finally making the case that the convict lease system and southern chain gang systems in many ways represented Soviet Gulags, from the death rates and conditions found in prison mines, prison plantations, road and forrest camps, etc to the role such penal projects played in infrastructure development. I've found numerous newspaper articles and convict interviews from the late 1800s and early 1900s and reading them, there are so many overlaps with Soviet Gulag memoirs.

I really dislike how Reagan focused so much on the Soviet Union as being an "evil empire" while he himself built up a massive prison industrial complex. Solzhenitsyn and Reagan were close friends and while they were correct to denounce the abuses that went on under communism, they have done a lot of damage in distorting American history and culture. State capitalism in America has done equally horrific things to what the Soviet Union did just like the Bush's, Clintons, and Trump have done equally bad things to what Putin has done.

Here's some sources you might find interesting. Top one is a documentary slavery by another name and then there's a bunch of books

https://vimeo.com/78437511

https://www.amazon.com/Twice-Work-Free-Labor-Political/dp/1859840868

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Prisoners-Their-World-1865-1900/dp/0813919843/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=black+prisoners+and+their+world&qid=1550435064&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/One-Dies-Get-Another-1866-1928/dp/1570030839/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=one+dies+get+another&qid=1550435037&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=2AVK8K7PCQ5GM&keywords=slavery+by+another+name+book&qid=1550435091&s=gateway&sprefix=Slavery+by+anothe&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Chained-Silence-Convict-Justice-Politics-ebook/dp/B00VKMOP94/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=black+women+georgia+convict+lease&qid=1550435149&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr0