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Reading Losurdo’s Stalin book has opened my eyes to just how horrific things were for black folks from the end of Reconstruction to the start of WWII in particular.
What's the context in which he brings that up?
Book was translated and published recently i think
Yep. The PDF of it is free here: https://www.iskrabooks.org/stalin-history-and-critique
It was done in part by the guy from the Guerilla History podcast.
The book is largely taking claims / slander aimed at the Stalin-era Soviet Union and showing how it was largely untrue but also how things were way worse in the West. I know in one section he brings up how the prison system in the US South in the period I mentioned was pretty much just what anti-communists think the gulags were (and of course mostly it was black men who suffered). I don’t recall the exact context in which Losurdo brings up lynchings, though. I remember the focus was on how white society in the south wholly participated in it, not like it was just isolated incidents of just a few participants (lynchings were advertised in the newspapers in advance and often hundreds or thousands of people would show up).
And also that period lasted decades!!! reconstruction was give or take a dozen years
Would you recommend any other Stalin reading as essential before Losurdo's take?
I haven't read much in detail about Stalin to be honest, but I am wary of starting reading about him with a polemic (but then, all history is polemic - so, idk).
I actually expected it to be a lot more of a polemic than it was tbh
Did you read any stuff about Stalin/Russia before that? (I've read lots of Lenin and stuff about Russia in Afghanistan but nothing else)
I genuinely think it's better to read that one first. It was revelatory for me.
Otherwise, Getty's Origins of the Great Purges or Furr's Khrushchev Lied.