>try to find good history book on the USSR
>"Shortest history"
>"Brief Outline"
>"tragedy"
>Go to Reddit out of sheer desperation
>all of their top picks are by giga-liberals
>they are ALL narrative pseudo histories

Why is it impossible to find a decent book on the USSR?

>>17864317 (OP)
You’re not allowed to learn the story and the wisdom of the Soviets.
You will listen to shitlibs, tankies, and capitalists who have never been there, don’t speak Russian, hate heckin racism, Chuds, themselves, and Russia.

>>17864323
Thanks for nothing, asshole.

Sheila Fitzpatrick is good
She is a liberal and so that colours her analysis, for example she'll say that the progress they made could have been made under liberalism without as much suffering, that revolutions are bad, etc but she's as balanced as a liberal can be
Stephen Kotkin is another good author who is also a liberal
Obviously his Stalin biography is great but Magnetic Mountain is a masterpiece

>>17864360
>She is a liberal
Great. /his/ really is a shithole. Now I get why so many are compared to plebbitors.
>she'll say that the progress they made could have been made under liberalism without as much suffering
The whole reason the communists took power is because liberals bungled their government and lost it.
>she's as balanced as a liberal can be
Which is to say "not at all".
>Stephen Kotkin is another good author who is also a liberal
Fucking hell. Are you trying to piss me off?

>>17864366
>I want books about the USSR
>Ok here are some books
>NO THOSE ARE MADE BY STINKY LIBERALS
Ok so kinda of books do you want them?

>>17864372
>Ok so kinda of books do you want them?
When I was in middle school I read a book called "General History of the USSR" published sometime in the 80s. I can't find it anymore or remember the author's name. It was empirio-statistical: it had extensive maps, statistics of resources, and every section was themed while the whole book was chronological yet the author was sure to lead with factual points before offering interpretations. You had the complete basis of evidence before moving on.

The big problem with liberals is that they always, always, always lead with their narrative conformed opinions and rarely if ever talk about the first hand evidence wholesale. Half the time they don't even take themselves seriously ("Shortest" history of the USSR, anyone?). They simply cannot write good history. That's why no one is interested in history books anymore. They're like penny dreadfuls if the authors were hacks, the plotlines were spoiled, the author left out key details and blamed unreliable narrator, and if you try to come to your own conclusions you'll get asked to not buy the book in the first place. I really wonder what you expected to get out of those books or why you thought those bits by Kotkin were good. Every time I see his name cited elsewhere I have to double check his evidence because it always conflicts with others. His name is mentally marked down as "giant error sign" whenever I see it.

btw I read it in the 2000s and the library that had doesn't have a website to check their catalogue

Publishers often chase dramatic angles

>>17864323
>hate heckin racism
Most anticommunists are also racist though.

>>17864689
not really.
conservatives arent racist, they genuinely are not racist.
its like their biggest flaw.

>>17864707
>conservatives
Those are people who lives through the cold war. They associate communism with repressive governments like those that existed the USSR. Modern anticommunism stems from the view that communism is a Jewish plot to subvert white people and flood them with shitskins.

>>17864372
Is not wanting to be lied to too much to ask?

Because the english books are all made by seething americans

>>17864360
>Sheila Fitzpatrick is good
>>17864366
>Great. /his/ really is a shithole. Now I get why so many are compared to plebbitors.
Well the reason Fitzpatrick gets recommended is that she (along with other revisionist historians, this term is meant positively) was part of a new generation that wrote about the USSR after it collapsed and in a more complicated way as the Soviet archives opened up and the historians got access to people who lived there and could talk about their experiences living in it. The USSR was a closed society when it existed and "Russian studies" in the U.S. during the Cold War was really shaped by CIA-funded "area studies" programs.

>>17864317 (OP)
Just take a plane to Russia and ask them yourself.

>>17864360
Kotkin is a /pol/-tier chud
The only reason why he wrote some passable stuff on Stalin is that he doesn't do the whole
>and then evil Stalin showed up and betrayed the revolution
but that's because he wants to say that "evil totalitarianism" is the natural conclusion of 1917.

>>17864998
I don't speak Russian and that's missing the whole point.
>>17864990
>people who lived there and could talk about their experiences
Again, that's pure narrative. While that would be interesting to see in a summary section, that's more to do with sociology.
>USSR was a closed society
Great. Another ultra liberalists Popperite.

>>17864998
And ask who? 80-year-old ppl suffering from dementia who have a rosy view of the USSR because they grew up in the Khrushchev era (even though the worst parts of the USSR's history took place in the Stalinist era)?
Russian Zoomers who post on Dva-ch and VK who literally have no memories of the USSR other than in the form of some old pics at their grandparents' house?
People in their 40s/50s who really grew up in the Brezhnev/Perestroika era and got to see the worst of Russia, but only because it was undergoing neoliberal shock therapy?

Nigga, I wouldn't trust a random fucko out on the street to have a near-encyclopaedic knowledge on what was once the world's largest country, which existed for 3 whole generations. An academic historian? Perhaps, but they might be biased. A history enthusiast? Probably, but history enthusiasts tend to have a knowledge base that can be extremely skewed towards niche subjects, like railroads and weapons, in addition to uncritically accepting politically biased accounts that back their views.

>>17865019
I would be okay with bias as long as it comes with sturdy explanation and with of trove of factual information.

>>17865005
I'm sure there are Russians who speak English. Also how is it missing the point? What even is your point? You're just nitpicking every answer anons give you as too liberal leaning or flat out propaganda. If you can't take the words of some Russian boomer then you're just chasing something that doesn't exist.

>>17865024
>You're just nitpicking every answer anons give you as too liberal leaning or flat out propaganda
Those are the same answers. I literally started this thread looking for a Soviet history that wasn't full of liberal logical faults and narratives and all I got in response were liberal authors. This isn't confusing. When someone says:
>"wrote about the USSR after it collapsed and in a more complicated way"
That's made to sound promising, but it's immediately followed up with Popperian propaganda like:
>"Soviet archives opened up and the historians got access to people"
If I wanted those things, I would just pick up a book from the USSR itself. That's probably my only real answer to this dilemma. It's jarring how blind liberals are to their own propaganda. Like you tell them you don't want it and they keep shoving the stinky cheese in your face and after five "no's" they're like "well what's wrong with my propaganda? You're impossible to please". Like come on now.

>>17865023
The problem with books, especially with fact and number-heavy books, is that they rarely give people a good idea of what lived experience with something is like. My step-grandfather (my step-mother's father) was from the Russian SSFR, and I remember he occasionally spoke about life in the USSR, which made me enthusiastic about learning more about it as a kid.
I remember back when I was 11/12 years old that I read several really thick books I found at my school's library about Russia and the Soviet Union, which of course helped give me some idea about stuff like the Romanovs, the Russian Revolution, big names like Lenin, Stalin, Beria, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, and even some factoids about Russian culture, but nothing too in-depth. I grew up on the other side of the Atlantic, so I never had any idea as a kid what Russian cities actually looked like or what kinds of clothing Russian people wore in the Soviet era, much less what Russian men or women's voices actually sounded like.
I remember reading more and more old translated Russian books, by famous writers like Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky, but still, I had no idea what Russia actually looked like.
It was really only until I started watching shitty-ass Soviet-era movies (mostly low-budget comedy films and action films, but also some romance films) that I really got an idea of what kinds of clothing people wore, what cities looked like in the USSR, and how Russian people actually expressed themselves (as opposed to exaggerated stereotypes of them oft encountered in American films).

So my advice: just watch shitty Soviet-era Russian movies. You'll learn more about the USSR through them than through any tomes on economic data and census records from the Soviet Union.

>>17865052
igla is pretty alright, mostly because it has tsoi

>>17864400
>>17864942
you need to calm down a bit anon