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    Books about communism

    This should be an instant century thread. Just read 'Party Animals: My Family and other Communists' by David Aaronovitch. A much more serious tome than Alexei Sayle's 'Stalin Ate My Homework', because Aaronovitch is a much more serious person than Sayle. I know who I'd rather have a pint with. But from a reading perspective, I absolutely loved both books about growing up post-war in families where the parents were very, very committed members of the CPGB.

    #2
    Recently bought China Mieville's October, a history of the Russian revolution. I may start on it soon.

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      #3
      Any recommendations for a comprehensive history book on the DDR?

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        #4
        In answer to the opening post rather than the one above, there is this, which I really should get around to reading soon. It's on the list for family reasons; Paul was my grandfather's brother.
        I suppose I should note that that 'review' is no such thing. It would appear to be the blurb repeated verbatim. The same thing word-for-word is elsewhere on the web.
        Last edited by Janik; 08-07-2017, 23:40.

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          #5
          Stasiland is the best that I've read, but it isn't comprehensive

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            #6
            Originally posted by Janik View Post
            In answer to the opening post rather than the one above, there is this, which I really should get around to reading soon. It's on the list for family reasons; Paul was my grandfather's brother.
            I suppose I should note that that 'review' is no such thing. It would appear to be the blurb repeated verbatim. The same thing word-for-word is elsewhere on the web.
            It appears, for instance, on the book's Amazon UK page. I do like the additional bit that appears there, however:
            David Parker is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Leeds and a specialist in early modern Europe. More importantly for the present volume he is the the son of Leslie who taught him that there is more to history than can be found in text books and left him a stack of letters to prove it.

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              #7
              Originally posted by Cal Alamein View Post
              Any recommendations for a comprehensive history book on the DDR?
              Mary Fulbrook's 'The People's State' is very thorough, if a bit heavy-going.

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                #8
                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                Stasiland is the best that I've read, but it isn't comprehensive
                I read The Race Against The Stasi a couple of months ago and that was good.

                Comrade Rockstar about Dean Reed was quite good on social history.

                The Last Stalinist about Santiago Carrillo was alright as well.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                  It appears, for instance, on the book's Amazon UK page. I do like the additional bit that appears there, however
                  Which is also on the back cover of the book (I'm round my parents house, so looking at their copy).

                  Edit - Why did 'reply with quote' just pick up the previous post partially, anyone know?

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by imp View Post
                    This should be an instant century thread. Just read 'Party Animals: My Family and other Communists' by David Aaronovitch. A much more serious tome than Alexei Sayle's 'Stalin Ate My Homework', because Aaronovitch is a much more serious person than Sayle. I know who I'd rather have a pint with. But from a reading perspective, I absolutely loved both books about growing up post-war in families where the parents were very, very committed members of the CPGB.
                    Not occupying exactly the same territory, but Francis Beckett's Rise & Fall Of The British Communist Party is a very readable CPGB history. Of the multi-volume "official" party histories, I've tried Geoff Andrews' book covering 1964-91, but it's a bit heavy going for me.
                    Last edited by Furtho; 09-07-2017, 20:51.

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                      #11
                      David Boyd Haycock's I Am Spain isn't "a book about communism" per se, but it tells the Spanish Civil War story well. Its angle is often the various artistic types who went to Spain - your Orwells and Hemingways, yes, but also lesser-known figures like the young poet John Cornford - which is absolutely right up my street.

                      I've remembered a couple of other more directly communist-related books too but will come back to them later.

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                        #12
                        Thanks for the examples of DDR histories. I sampled a few pages of "The People's State" and it was some tough sledding, but I think I'll give it a go.

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                          #13
                          Couple of things in the graphic novel area are Tim Sanders & John Newsinger's 1917: Russia's Red Year and Kate Evans' Red Rosa. The former is a fairly slim volume telling the story of Russia between February and October 1917, the latter a biog of Rosa Luxemburg. If I had to choose one over the other it would be Red Rosa, perhaps rather better artwork (or maybe just more to my taste) and the Russian Revolution book is somewhat more kid or teenager-friendly.

                          Kind of interesting as a companion to books recounting the history of the CPGB is John Green's Britain's Communists: The Untold Story. It's not the best-written book in the world, but perhaps the rather defensive tone adopted throughout is a sensible way to draw attention to the work of CPGB members, supporters and sympathisers in a wide variety of spheres.

                          On the subject of the GDR, John Green has also cowritten with Bruni de la Motte a short book called Stasi State Or Socialist Paradise?, which as per Britain's Communists: The Untold Story takes a "Hey, now actually East Germany did lots of good things in frankly pretty tricky circumstances," tack. Again, perhaps a companion piece rather than a go-to guide to the subject.

                          I chat on Twitter with an academic whose speciality is the GDR and when I asked him to recommend an accessible general history of the country in English, he more or less said that such a book hasn't been written.

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                            #14
                            Archie Brown's 'Rise and Fall of Communism' is very good I thought.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by imp View Post
                              This should be an instant century thread. Just read 'Party Animals: My Family and other Communists' by David Aaronovitch. A much more serious tome than Alexei Sayle's 'Stalin Ate My Homework', because Aaronovitch is a much more serious person than Sayle. I know who I'd rather have a pint with. But from a reading perspective, I absolutely loved both books about growing up post-war in families where the parents were very, very committed members of the CPGB.
                              I whole heartedly agree with this post. Both books are excellent in their own way but the Aaronovitch is much the better. It surprised me in many ways i.e. It's not a 'communists were all brainwashed' type book that I was expecting, it puts a real human face on these people and explains why they believed what they did. It's very moving.

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                                #16
                                When I was at Wolves Poly Mike Dennis did modules on the DDR, which Ms Felicity (as a history student) did. I've read some of his stuff about East German football, but not the political histories, but probably worth checking out.

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                                  #17
                                  For the second time in 10 minutes, I am going to recommend Simon Sebag Montefiore and, specifically, "Young Stalin" which is, I suppose, more of a pre-history of communism. I haven't red "Red Tsar" yet but imagine that would be just as good.

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                                    #18
                                    Has anyone read China Miéville's "October: The Story of the Russian Revolution"? Is it any good?

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                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by Furtho View Post
                                      Couple of things in the graphic novel area are Tim Sanders & John Newsinger's 1917: Russia's Red Year and Kate Evans' Red Rosa. The former is a fairly slim volume telling the story of Russia between February and October 1917, the latter a biog of Rosa Luxemburg. If I had to choose one over the other it would be Red Rosa, perhaps rather better artwork (or maybe just more to my taste) and the Russian Revolution book is somewhat more kid or teenager-friendly.

                                      Kind of interesting as a companion to books recounting the history of the CPGB is John Green's Britain's Communists: The Untold Story. It's not the best-written book in the world, but perhaps the rather defensive tone adopted throughout is a sensible way to draw attention to the work of CPGB members, supporters and sympathisers in a wide variety of spheres.

                                      On the subject of the GDR, John Green has also cowritten with Bruni de la Motte a short book called Stasi State Or Socialist Paradise?, which as per Britain's Communists: The Untold Story takes a "Hey, now actually East Germany did lots of good things in frankly pretty tricky circumstances," tack. Again, perhaps a companion piece rather than a go-to guide to the subject.

                                      I chat on Twitter with an academic whose speciality is the GDR and when I asked him to recommend an accessible general history of the country in English, he more or less said that such a book hasn't been written.
                                      Guy de Lisle's graphic novel 'Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea' is also very good, describing his three months working there as a cartoonist, leading a group of local workers who were cheap labour for some USA animated production. His co-workers were on a different floor and he wasn't allowed to actually ever meet them. I also loved the bit where he gets drunk with his minders during a picnic on a hillside somewhere.

                                      I wonder if I should write a history of the DDR in English. (Puts it on a list of things 'To Do' and forgets about it.)

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                                        #20
                                        I'm looking forward to the bd The Death of Stalin which has been translated into english thanks to Armando Iannucci making it into a film. So much room for horror and comedy there I'm guessing.

                                        I got a general DDR history book from a tourist shop in Berlin. It didn't look amazing but it seemed to cover the basics, I haven't picked it up since though. I'll dig it out tonight.

                                        On the fiction front I can't recommend enough The Tower by Uwe Tellkamp. Brilliant novel about a well to do family of doctors and writers in Dresden through the 80s. I would also suggest reading And Quiet Flows The Don which I reread this year. It's a stunning book and I don't quite understand how it got published/I don't understand how the soviet authorities were happy for the civil war to be portrayed.

                                        Finally, Postwar by Tony Judt. It really is a general history of Europe but that means there is a lot on the communist regimes.

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                                          #21
                                          Maxim Leo's 'Red Love' about his family growing up in the DDR was very enjoyable, readable and an interesting tale about the intertwining of people's lives as nazis, then as Communists and as ordinary people throughout.

                                          'Red Plenty' by Francis Spufford is fanbloodytastic on the Kruschev Thaw, after Stalin's death when a generation gave communism a damn good go before Brezhnev's rise put an end to it.

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                                            #22
                                            Red Plenty is brilliant. Best novel ever written about the price mechanism.

                                            Earlier this year I read quite a bit about the end of communism in Russia - and two books kind of stood out. The first was The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy by Chris Miller, which argued that a) Perestroika was much more inspired by Deng's China than it was by anything going on in the west or Yugoslavia and b) entrenched interests were so strong in Russia that the only way Gorbachev could get reforms through was to pay off losers through massive subsidies - which in turn set off the inflation which brought down the system. The other was a collection of essays and diary entries just called "1990: Russians remember a turning point". It pinpoints 1990 as the crucial year - in 1989 the SovUn might still have ended up like th rest of E. Europe but by 1991 it was clearly headed for economic disaster, coups and dissolution. So it;s a month-by-month portrait of how things deteriorated that year. useful to read side-by-side with something like Remnick's Lenin's Tomb.

                                            Also: Anatoly Rybakov's Children of the Arbat is a pretty good (fictional, sort of) view of Moscow at the edge of the purges. Stalin and the Scientists by Simon Ings is a pretty interesting tale of how biology became corrupted by politics under communism. Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring is a really neat account - again, month-by-month of how Soviet society reacted to Kruschev's secret speech. All good stuff.

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                                              #23
                                              That really stood out in Red Plenty - that Perestroika was the attempt by the Krushchev generation to reform the system, only this time, it was almost so far gone as to be unsavable. The Brezhnev generation basically decided that they hadn't survived the purges and navigated the system to actually make the system work, as opposed to living (relatively) higher on the hog. The work of reform could wait for the next lots of guys. That turned out to be Gorbachev

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                                                #24
                                                What I liked about RP was that it was written from such a sympathetic angle - characters who really wanted the system to work and thought the math existed to do so. And doesn't try to make them look foolish for doing so.

                                                And yet the scene that ends "the price is based on weight" is maybe the most merciless skewering of central planning ever.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Been thinking more about this and I think maybe the most remarkable book about Communism I've ever read is Kurt Scholgel's Moscow 1937. It's 20-odd chapters, each about an amazing event which occurred or a place which opened in that year. The Pushkin Embankment at Luna Park. The Moscow-Volga canal. New stores at GUM/TUM. Each is a thumbnail of a triumph of the soviet economy and soviet culture.

                                                  Each also ends with a recap of the main players in that chapter, and the date on which they were exiled, jailed, sent to a camp, or executed during the years 1937-1940.

                                                  It's very very good.

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