What are some good books about life in the USSR?
What are some good books about life in the USSR?
I'm looking for either unbiased nonfiction, or translated stories directly from the time and place. I figured you all here would be a good source to ask :p
This Soviet World by Anna Louise Strong
Thanks so much. I've only read a little bit so far and I'm already enjoying it.
I haven't read it myself yet, but there is some discussion about the book (and Strong herself) in this video by Lady Izdihar
There is a slightly better version of it on libgen (link to annas-archive). (I used that to make an EPUB of it)
Blackshirts and Reds is not dedicated fully to this but is a great book to read and has a lot of Eastern Bloc details.
Thanks!
John Steinbeck's "Russian Journal" was very interesting. He's not a hard-line communist by any stretch so him going over and touring around in like 47 was very cool. A really underappreciated piece of literature.
Caroline Humphrey's Karl Marx Collective, Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm is very, very local but a really interesting look at day-to-day functioning of collective farming in the 80s. The more recent edition, sub-subtitled "Marx Went Away--But Karl Stayed Behind" (A reference to the fact that post 1991 the Karl Marx collectives renamed themseves to Karl collectives).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9098764
It's very, very dry reading (and the goodreads description is right when it calls it 'dispiriting'), but lets you get a closer look at people who don't get much attention (other than as vague "the farmers"), and who generally aren't able to write themselves (and those who do write don't tend to be representative of those who stay on the farms)
Also there's some interesting descriptions of how local religions interacted with socialism e.g.
Red hangover
Everyday Stalinism by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
several people I respect have recommended "everything was forever until it was no more" by Alexey yurchak.