Red Flag Wounded: Stalinism and the Fate of the Soviet Experiment

by Ronald Grigor Suny

Red Flag Wounded brings together essays covering the controversies and debates over the fraught history of the Soviet Union from the revolution to its disintegration. Those monumental years were marked not only by violence, mass killing, and the brutal overturning of a peasant society but also by the modernisation and industrialisation of the largest country in the world, the victory over fascism, and the slow recovery of society after the nightmare of Stalinism.

Genres: History, Soviet Union, Nonfiction, Russia

272 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2020

About the author

Ronald Grigor Suny is the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan and professor emeritus of political science and history at the University of Chicago.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suny looks at the historiography of Stalinism in this book. Chapters deal with some major topics (biographies of Stalin, Stalinism as a whole, the nationality question) and look at some of the more prominent scholars of Stalinism (Moshe Lewin, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Steven Cohen, Stephen Kotkin), and concludes with an overview of Gorbachev's reforms and how that led to the end of the USSR. It's overall an excellent source on getting an idea on the history of the field and how to properly read and study Stalin and Stalinism.

[Kieran Rudd · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. The first two essays are really good but the rest are way too specific when all I was really looking for was a 1917-1953 history that wasn't either grindingly detailed, "history for dummies", or written by a freak/zionist/arch conservative.

I think the book I wanted was Suny's other book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...

Or maybe this one: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...