Anonymous 2021-05-17 (Mon) 05:55:47 No. 5706
>>5705 Montefiore is the worst historian I can think of, why even ask.
Anonymous 2021-05-17 (Mon) 05:57:32 No. 5707
>>5706 I've heard they're rollicking reads if you treat them as fiction
tankie Tankie Anonymous 2021-05-17 (Mon) 07:11:41 No. 5708
Found EPUBs of these books, if anyone wants to read them.
>>5706 I'm not familiar with him or his work, that's why I ask. Would you mind elaborating on why he's a bad historian, ideally with citations for further reading?
Anonymous 2021-05-17 (Mon) 23:19:05 No. 5713
>>5712 While pretty fucking damning, ad hominems don't invalidate his research.
Anonymous 2021-05-17 (Mon) 23:21:51 No. 5714
>>5713 Im pretty sure he didnt do any research
Anonymous 2021-05-18 (Tue) 07:24:44 No. 5715
I read young Stalin and it reads like gossip. Everything has to either resort to his sexual relationships, his relationship with his parents and how much his "innate tyrant" was formed in these years preluding revolution. For that he refers to anecdotes of friends and enemies. So it isn't a history book, it's more of a pop-psychology book. And it is the type of pop-psychology that liberals really dig, because it leaves out the political transformation and only concerns itself with his character traits and who he fucked with.
Anonymous 2021-05-19 (Wed) 19:04:03 No. 5739
>>5705 He's a fun read, but is the source for a lot of anti-Communist (anti-Stalin, anti-Beria, anti-Lenin, etc.) slander. He's the pop-history type who self-admittedly has "unorthodox" (see, sourcing from conjecture) ways of sourcing for his books. It's a mixed bag imo, treat his work like fiction/read it with a grain of salt and you'll have a good time. He also comes from a literal Anglo global banker hereditary aristocracy and has written "historical" fiction about the Bolsheviks which included sex scenes so bad he got shortlisted for a bad sex scenes award.
Anonymous 2021-05-19 (Wed) 22:00:34 No. 5741
>>5705 From what I understand Simon Sebag Montefiore is a carryover from the Cold War-era "totalitarian" school of Soviet historiography. If you're interested in someone demonizing Stalin based on the kind of archival research his predecessors didn't have, then he's your man. If you want a bio of Stalin that's more even-handed, then look at historians belonging to the "revisionist" school of Soviet historiography like Ronald Grigor Suny. I've heard good things about his recent Stalin bio,
Passage to Revolution .
Anonymous 2021-05-20 (Thu) 20:47:47 No. 5745
>>5705 Its complete bullshit
Anonymous 2021-05-23 (Sun) 03:10:50 No. 5789
>>5741 One of his books was assigned reading in my soviet history class. It was evenhanded. Definitely worth reading.
Montefiores young stalin i cited in one of my essays. It was just a bunch of anecdotes about Stalin that were meant to make him look shit but ended up making me like him alot more. Dude was badass
ak-47 AK-47 Anonymous 2021-05-23 (Sun) 12:50:55 No. 5794
>>5741 >his recent Stalin bio, Passage to Revolution Did not know this was out. Thanks for the info.
Anonymous 2021-05-26 (Wed) 20:49:31 No. 5840
>>5713 that implies he did any research
Anonymous 2021-05-28 (Fri) 22:43:44 No. 5847
>>5805 It's pretty old now -as it was one of the first real biography of Stalin-, so it's not really the top-notch academia book with the most recents archival discoveries, but it remains an important and foundational classic. Of course, it's Souvarine so it's deeply anti-Stalin.
iww IWW Anonymous 2021-06-01 (Tue) 02:00:22 No. 5921
>>5847 >Of course, it's Souvarine so it's deeply anti-Stalin. Is it too biased to read then?
Anonymous 2021-06-07 (Mon) 17:06:05 No. 6013
>>5789 Suny's been making the rounds lately raising awareness for his book contra Montefiore, Kotkin, etc. Here's a timestamped youtube video where he distinguishes his bio from other bios on the market:
https://youtu.be/8GRS2kMlZsk?t=1507 >>5794 No problem! I recently ordered copy and am looking forward to reading it.
Anonymous 2021-06-07 (Mon) 17:29:29 No. 6014
>>6013 >"With Steve Kotkin […] he doesn't take the earlier period that seriously. Montefiore who DOES look at the early Stalin (he has a book called Young Stalin ) in fact DOESN'T take Marxism, the 'National Question' seriously—One time I met Montefiore and he said, "What are you interested in?" I said, "Well I'm interested in the Revolution, the labor movement; I'm interested in, yknow, social democracy" and he said, "Oh good! I'm interested in his women." So if you're interested in his women, then go to Montefiore and you'll find a Stalin who's not only a bandit, a gangster, a terrorist, but a pedophile. I took Stalin very seriously; I took Marxism very seriously. He was a journalist for much of his career! He wrote dozens and dozens of articles in Georgian and in Russian—and he wrote on the 'National Question' […] So it's a lot of context—maybe too much context." Anonymous 2021-06-07 (Mon) 17:31:57 No. 6015
>>6014 Here's hoping Suny lives long enough to write a book on Stalin during the early Soviet period.
Anonymous 2021-06-10 (Thu) 16:15:09 No. 6031
>>5921 What does "too biased" means ? If the question is the anti-stalinist position is backed up by solid sources, even marvellous for a time when knowing something about the soviet union was extremely difficult, then no it's not "too biased".
iww IWW