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The Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism: A History of 20th-Century Russia
From the Oval Office to the streets of Moscow, world leaders and ordinary citizens alike share concerns about Russia. Can democracy survive there? What does the future hold for the once expansive, still powerful, Russian nation? Is Soviet Communism truly dead? Top diplomats struggle daily with questions like these. With this course, you can begin investigating them for yourself.
LECTURES
16 Lectures
1. Nicholas II and the Russian Empire
2. The Failure of Constitutional Government
3. Russia and the First World War
4. Lenin and the Origins of Bolshevism
5. Lenin Comes to Power
6. Lenin and the Making of a Bolshevik State
7. The Twenties
8. Stalin and the "Second October Revolution"
9. Stalin and the "Great Terror"
10. Stalin, Hitler and the Road to War
11. The USSR at War
12. Stalin's Last Years
13. De-Stalinization
14. Gorbachev and Perestroika
15. The Disintegration of the USSR
16. Rebirth of Russia or the Rebirth of the USSR?
LECTURES
16 Lectures
1. Nicholas II and the Russian Empire
2. The Failure of Constitutional Government
3. Russia and the First World War
4. Lenin and the Origins of Bolshevism
5. Lenin Comes to Power
6. Lenin and the Making of a Bolshevik State
7. The Twenties
8. Stalin and the "Second October Revolution"
9. Stalin and the "Great Terror"
10. Stalin, Hitler and the Road to War
11. The USSR at War
12. Stalin's Last Years
13. De-Stalinization
14. Gorbachev and Perestroika
15. The Disintegration of the USSR
16. Rebirth of Russia or the Rebirth of the USSR?
1 pages, Audio Cassette
First published January 1, 1996
13 people are currently reading
146 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
October 27, 2021
I don't think this was a satisfactory series. It was mostly about the top leadership of the Communist Party but it did not address the rest of Soviet society. I like national histories that are not structured from a western perspective but this course barely had any mention of the Cold War! I don't think the Cuban Missile Crisis was even mentioned, nor was Afghanistan, the Warsaw pact, Berlin Wall etc.
January 9, 2023
Hamburg gives a reasonably concise history of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. He reaches back to the mid-19th century to find the earliest trends in Russian political thought that would be woven into the rise of the Soviet Union. He then masterfully points out the multiplicity of views held by those who sought to improve or strengthen the Russian Empire and charts out the geopolitical conditions that led to one outcome over other. He similarly chronicles the waves of repression and (slight) liberalization that marked leadership changes in the Soviet Union, noting the horrifying price of the non-negligible improvements under Soviet leadership. Lastly, by a happy coincidence, the publication date of 1996 gives the modern reader the ability to see the end of the Soviet Union independently of the changes that would later befall the Russian federation and it makes Hamburg’s warnings of the empire-minded and autocratic impulses already then visible in the Russian political developments all the more prescient.
September 14, 2017
This is probably the third lecture I've listened to by the Teaching Company over the years, they're always informative, this one was no exception. There was a decent balance between the big historical figures and the everyday life of the everyman and how he lived under the Soviet regieme.
This is 12 hours of lectures, 16 lectures around 45 minutes each. There were a couple points throughout where I felt a bit more detail was warranted. For example how Lenin and the Bolshevik's actually took power by literally seizing government offices.
The lecturer is pretty good, well-informed of course. He sighs a bit too often, but he does brings some humor to what can be a rather dismal, even horrific subject at times.
This is 12 hours of lectures, 16 lectures around 45 minutes each. There were a couple points throughout where I felt a bit more detail was warranted. For example how Lenin and the Bolshevik's actually took power by literally seizing government offices.
The lecturer is pretty good, well-informed of course. He sighs a bit too often, but he does brings some humor to what can be a rather dismal, even horrific subject at times.
December 24, 2024
High school taught me basically nothing about Russia, and what little I know has been pieced together through literature, so I was excited that this lecture series did such a thorough job of filling in a major portion of Russian/Soviet history for me. The professor’s style is sometimes a little halting, but his turns of phrase are delightful and he did a marvelous job of examining the history from multiple viewpoints (not just, for example, war or economics) and following causes and effects through long stretches of time.
September 22, 2025
This was a good, broad strokes history of the rise and fall of Soviet communism. The professor tried to offer insight and detail where he could in an attempt to create a deeper picture of the political turmoil, or what it felt like to live in Russia during this tumultuous time, but I think this could have been twice as long and been much more effective. 24 lectures was not enough. If you paid attention in school, this series doesn't offer much more insight.
April 14, 2023
Interesting overview, but a little too narrowly focussed on the leadership and economy - I'd have liked to see a little more attention to the lives and experiences of ordinary people rather than just those at the top of the hierarchy.
April 21, 2023
This is a very useful panoramic movie of Russian, Soviet–and the birth of post-Soviet–economic and political history over the last century. The Course was recorded in 1998, so that's where Hamburg's movie ends... with ominous perspicacity.
You can see the two dragons wrestling with each other for the duration. The socialist attempt to actually meet the basic needs of all the people, thwarted by a millennium-long Russian propensity to seek authoritarian regimes to run collective affairs.
But, over the last century, the corruption and unleashed psychopathy of the authoritarians ate up the socialist mother country from the inside out until it fragmented into chaos that continues to this day.
Even if you only listen to the amazing last fifteen minutes of this course, you will see exactly what Reagan's Cold War Child, the free-marketized Russia, was forced into being by the fascist, capitalist overlord American-fabricated $10 trillion Cold War (which, Hamburg claims, really came into being in 1917, not just after WW II).
The conspiracy that dealt the death blow to the Soviet Union was waged by leaders of the three east slavic republics: Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine!
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, so did a constitution that protected the rights of the Russian people.
So what kind of wonderful Reagan's Cold War Child democracy grew in place of the socialist command economy? "In his first year of rule, Yeltsin accepted from the existing Russian parliament the right to rule by decree."
At the end of the year Yeltsin fought the parliament to restore his right to rule by decree and fought to "dispense with the legislature entirely. After 1993, after the parliament was shot-up by tanks and the new constitution had to be written, Yeltsin wrote a constitution that gave exceptionally wide range of powers to the presidency and practically hamstrung the legislature. So by the western understanding of the word democrat, I think Yeltsin is not one."
Hamburg next talks about a Russian president ordering tanks to bombard the parliament building, which is called the White House: "... symbolically speaking, the burnt-out shell of the seventh floor of the White House–all of the black soot on that white marble exterior... gives you a pretty adequate picture of Yeltsin's... unprincipled commitment to democracy."
Makes me think Putin is really just Reagan Bush Yeltsinstein's monster after three decades of gestation. Good ole Russian Authoritarianism was back, baby! This is the Cold War child forced into the world by almost all of our leaders in the Republican and Democratic parties since the 1940s as they forced us taxpayers to spend that $10 trillion to fight a straw man called, "Russia and China want to take over America! We must end totalitarian communism everywhere!"
Hamburg continues: In "December 1994, the regime committed itself to a war in Chechnya... without the approval of parliament: it was a presidential war....waged by the army and by the executive.... Yeltsin has been duplicitous... I think that he has simply lied about his intentions. This is a Soviet manner of behavior manifesting itself now in a post-Soviet politician."
In the last fifteen minutes, Hamburg describes what the Russian people endured between 1991 and 1995 as socialism disintegrated into the void of history.
First, in January 1992 the Soviet Union's command economy that had set price controls for over 150,000 different products, was halted by Yeltsin and price decontrol was implemented so that supply-and-demand could take over determining prices. That resulted in instant runaway inflation.
"He established the principle of a convertible ruble" for world markets. Yeltsin established privatization. "All these things were necessary to establish a real market with real money."
When ownership was offered to people for their apartments, that only meant that the government stopped being responsible for paying to repair the pipes; that became an additional burden on the workers.
It got worse. "There were consequences to these reforms: the command economy was destroyed.... On the ruins of the old system there grew up a new economic system... mafia capitalism."
Where did all of the Soviet bureaucrats end up? In the Russian mafia, which had been birthed out of patronage networks of the republics that had been created in Soviet times by networks of regional party leaders under protection of the KGB.
"The absence of a strong state under strong legal control has meant the flourishing of these pre-existent mafias and the creation of new ones.... If you go to Moscow now, it is not uncommon to see people with guns outside of establishments.... In politics there is an unholy alliance between the bankers and political parties. Money is the mother's milk of politics. We Americans know this well and the Russians are learning it now themselves."
He continues, "with the growth of this market there is the growth of social antagonisms. There is an impoverished pensioner class... There are impoverished young families. There are homeless people in Russia. This is a visible consequence of the market reforms. There is no doubt about it.... This is what happens in a market society. Can the Russians, after so many years–74 years of Soviet power... adjust to this reality? Only time can tell."
And then there is Ukraine in much earlier times. No Russian has ever forgotten that it was the Ukrainian people who welcomed the Nazis into the Soviet Union unleashing them until 28 million were dead.
The Ukrainians will point out that they thought the Nazis had to be better than Stalin! Stalin had waged TWO massive famines on the Ukrainians in the 1930s when they resisted agricultural collectivization.
Because Hamburg is only presenting the history of the last century he doesn't mention that Kiev is the Jerusalem of Russia. It's where Russia was born as a national political entity. It was even called Kievan Rus' from 879 to 1240 (longer than this part of North America has been called the United States).
So what we call Ukraine today was originally Russia for centuries (when did it stop being Russia, anyway?). Until 1991, it had never established a national government. So it's like Ron DeSantis's Florida cult waging a coup and declaring Florida a nation.
As far as Ukrainian referring to one's nationality and not its citizenship in a state within a nation, there are no Ukrainians older than 32 years old. There are only old Soviets who are older than 32.
Not just Putin, but all Russians have profoundly just security concerns over what the Ukrainian government does, especially if that's to join the military syndicate of Russia's and the Soviet peoples' arch enemy: The United States of NATO and the military industrial complex empire. An enemy that, during the Russian Civil War right after the 1917 October revolution, has actually invaded Russia to overthrow its government. The Soviets and Russians have NEVER threatened to do anything remotely like that to us or to any western European countries.
And even as the states were leaving the Soviet Union, it was thought that the three states of the east slavic people (Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians) would stay in close coalition as the homeland for the east slavic people.
Hamburg worries that 'it is a mistake, despite the passage of forty years and more, to think that the... former Soviet peoples have exorcised from themselves Stalin's ghost... [This] is going to be the hardest thing for the Russians to shake."
So it's massively important for all Americans today to learn systematically the history of the experiences of the Russians, before backing the advance of NATO right up to Russia's border. For the Russians, this is Ukraine inviting imperialist fascists into Ukraine once again.
This course, as any must, leaves out a lot of Soviet history. The biggest weakness of this history, like those by most American historians, is that the historian acts as if one can write about a country in isolation, outside of its world context, and not as an organism's accumulations of interactions with the rest of the world. It fosters the illusions of dualism.
But the 12-hour long painting Hamburg manages to evoke is very much worth beholding, a pretty good place to start to learn to see what happened behind the iron curtain throughout the 20th century and beyond.
Addendum:
If you are like most Americans, you've been duped into supporting Fascist Joe Biden's NATO war on Russia in Ukraine (and you probably have a strong reaction to my labeling it as such). When the war began, my first reaction was that I don't know shit about this. So I've been looking for credible sources on the history of NATO, Ukraine, and Russia.
One weakness of the book is the lack of anything on the Cuban Missile Crisis. That's where JFK did in a much worse way (threatened a nuclear holocaust) what Biden et al. condemn Putin for doing in a much milder way (invade a militarizing border state of Russia).
1A) Cuba decided to allow the Soviets to install nuclear missiles in Cuba.
1B) Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government want Ukraine to join NATO, which means the mandatory installation of nuclear-capable missiles in Ukraine on Russia's border.
2A) Kennedy threatened to launch a nuclear holocaust if the Russians and Cubans did this. He offered no respect for Cuban self determination on this matter.
2B) Putin threatened to invade Ukraine unless Biden prevented Ukraine from joining NATO. Putin never threatened to launch a nuclear war if Ukraine joined NATO.
3A) Historians seem to justify JFK threatening to destroy the entire world over this. At least, I've never seen a single historian condemn JFK for this psychopathic planet-killing threat.
3B) American politicians and bourgeois historians condemn Putin for his invasion, even though JFK was planning to invade Cuba if the installation wasn't halted and reversed, and almost did, accidentally.
4A) The only justification JFK had was that the Soviets were violating the Monroe Doctrine which prevents Soviet/Russian military presence anywhere in the entire WESTERN HEMISPHERE!
4B) Putin and the Russians have MANY security justifications for preventing NATO (it's arch enemy) from moving up to its border with Ukraine: like the fact that it was the Ukrainians who welcomed the Nazi's onto the land of the Soviet Union where they proceeded to in vase the rest of the western Soviet republics and murder 28 million Soviet citizens.
So JFK's response to the Cuban Missile Crisis provides justification for Putin's comparable, though less globally threatening response to the NATO threat in Ukraine.
Despite this omission, this audiobook of 16 college-level lectures provides a very good, pretty easy to understand introduction to the experiences of the Russian and Soviet people during the last century. Every American, especially those now cheerleading for Zelenskyy and Fascist Joe, should familiarize themselves with this material.
#USOUTOFNATO
You can see the two dragons wrestling with each other for the duration. The socialist attempt to actually meet the basic needs of all the people, thwarted by a millennium-long Russian propensity to seek authoritarian regimes to run collective affairs.
But, over the last century, the corruption and unleashed psychopathy of the authoritarians ate up the socialist mother country from the inside out until it fragmented into chaos that continues to this day.
Even if you only listen to the amazing last fifteen minutes of this course, you will see exactly what Reagan's Cold War Child, the free-marketized Russia, was forced into being by the fascist, capitalist overlord American-fabricated $10 trillion Cold War (which, Hamburg claims, really came into being in 1917, not just after WW II).
The conspiracy that dealt the death blow to the Soviet Union was waged by leaders of the three east slavic republics: Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine!
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, so did a constitution that protected the rights of the Russian people.
So what kind of wonderful Reagan's Cold War Child democracy grew in place of the socialist command economy? "In his first year of rule, Yeltsin accepted from the existing Russian parliament the right to rule by decree."
At the end of the year Yeltsin fought the parliament to restore his right to rule by decree and fought to "dispense with the legislature entirely. After 1993, after the parliament was shot-up by tanks and the new constitution had to be written, Yeltsin wrote a constitution that gave exceptionally wide range of powers to the presidency and practically hamstrung the legislature. So by the western understanding of the word democrat, I think Yeltsin is not one."
Hamburg next talks about a Russian president ordering tanks to bombard the parliament building, which is called the White House: "... symbolically speaking, the burnt-out shell of the seventh floor of the White House–all of the black soot on that white marble exterior... gives you a pretty adequate picture of Yeltsin's... unprincipled commitment to democracy."
Makes me think Putin is really just Reagan Bush Yeltsinstein's monster after three decades of gestation. Good ole Russian Authoritarianism was back, baby! This is the Cold War child forced into the world by almost all of our leaders in the Republican and Democratic parties since the 1940s as they forced us taxpayers to spend that $10 trillion to fight a straw man called, "Russia and China want to take over America! We must end totalitarian communism everywhere!"
Hamburg continues: In "December 1994, the regime committed itself to a war in Chechnya... without the approval of parliament: it was a presidential war....waged by the army and by the executive.... Yeltsin has been duplicitous... I think that he has simply lied about his intentions. This is a Soviet manner of behavior manifesting itself now in a post-Soviet politician."
In the last fifteen minutes, Hamburg describes what the Russian people endured between 1991 and 1995 as socialism disintegrated into the void of history.
First, in January 1992 the Soviet Union's command economy that had set price controls for over 150,000 different products, was halted by Yeltsin and price decontrol was implemented so that supply-and-demand could take over determining prices. That resulted in instant runaway inflation.
"He established the principle of a convertible ruble" for world markets. Yeltsin established privatization. "All these things were necessary to establish a real market with real money."
When ownership was offered to people for their apartments, that only meant that the government stopped being responsible for paying to repair the pipes; that became an additional burden on the workers.
It got worse. "There were consequences to these reforms: the command economy was destroyed.... On the ruins of the old system there grew up a new economic system... mafia capitalism."
Where did all of the Soviet bureaucrats end up? In the Russian mafia, which had been birthed out of patronage networks of the republics that had been created in Soviet times by networks of regional party leaders under protection of the KGB.
"The absence of a strong state under strong legal control has meant the flourishing of these pre-existent mafias and the creation of new ones.... If you go to Moscow now, it is not uncommon to see people with guns outside of establishments.... In politics there is an unholy alliance between the bankers and political parties. Money is the mother's milk of politics. We Americans know this well and the Russians are learning it now themselves."
He continues, "with the growth of this market there is the growth of social antagonisms. There is an impoverished pensioner class... There are impoverished young families. There are homeless people in Russia. This is a visible consequence of the market reforms. There is no doubt about it.... This is what happens in a market society. Can the Russians, after so many years–74 years of Soviet power... adjust to this reality? Only time can tell."
And then there is Ukraine in much earlier times. No Russian has ever forgotten that it was the Ukrainian people who welcomed the Nazis into the Soviet Union unleashing them until 28 million were dead.
The Ukrainians will point out that they thought the Nazis had to be better than Stalin! Stalin had waged TWO massive famines on the Ukrainians in the 1930s when they resisted agricultural collectivization.
Because Hamburg is only presenting the history of the last century he doesn't mention that Kiev is the Jerusalem of Russia. It's where Russia was born as a national political entity. It was even called Kievan Rus' from 879 to 1240 (longer than this part of North America has been called the United States).
So what we call Ukraine today was originally Russia for centuries (when did it stop being Russia, anyway?). Until 1991, it had never established a national government. So it's like Ron DeSantis's Florida cult waging a coup and declaring Florida a nation.
As far as Ukrainian referring to one's nationality and not its citizenship in a state within a nation, there are no Ukrainians older than 32 years old. There are only old Soviets who are older than 32.
Not just Putin, but all Russians have profoundly just security concerns over what the Ukrainian government does, especially if that's to join the military syndicate of Russia's and the Soviet peoples' arch enemy: The United States of NATO and the military industrial complex empire. An enemy that, during the Russian Civil War right after the 1917 October revolution, has actually invaded Russia to overthrow its government. The Soviets and Russians have NEVER threatened to do anything remotely like that to us or to any western European countries.
And even as the states were leaving the Soviet Union, it was thought that the three states of the east slavic people (Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians) would stay in close coalition as the homeland for the east slavic people.
Hamburg worries that 'it is a mistake, despite the passage of forty years and more, to think that the... former Soviet peoples have exorcised from themselves Stalin's ghost... [This] is going to be the hardest thing for the Russians to shake."
So it's massively important for all Americans today to learn systematically the history of the experiences of the Russians, before backing the advance of NATO right up to Russia's border. For the Russians, this is Ukraine inviting imperialist fascists into Ukraine once again.
This course, as any must, leaves out a lot of Soviet history. The biggest weakness of this history, like those by most American historians, is that the historian acts as if one can write about a country in isolation, outside of its world context, and not as an organism's accumulations of interactions with the rest of the world. It fosters the illusions of dualism.
But the 12-hour long painting Hamburg manages to evoke is very much worth beholding, a pretty good place to start to learn to see what happened behind the iron curtain throughout the 20th century and beyond.
Addendum:
If you are like most Americans, you've been duped into supporting Fascist Joe Biden's NATO war on Russia in Ukraine (and you probably have a strong reaction to my labeling it as such). When the war began, my first reaction was that I don't know shit about this. So I've been looking for credible sources on the history of NATO, Ukraine, and Russia.
One weakness of the book is the lack of anything on the Cuban Missile Crisis. That's where JFK did in a much worse way (threatened a nuclear holocaust) what Biden et al. condemn Putin for doing in a much milder way (invade a militarizing border state of Russia).
1A) Cuba decided to allow the Soviets to install nuclear missiles in Cuba.
1B) Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government want Ukraine to join NATO, which means the mandatory installation of nuclear-capable missiles in Ukraine on Russia's border.
2A) Kennedy threatened to launch a nuclear holocaust if the Russians and Cubans did this. He offered no respect for Cuban self determination on this matter.
2B) Putin threatened to invade Ukraine unless Biden prevented Ukraine from joining NATO. Putin never threatened to launch a nuclear war if Ukraine joined NATO.
3A) Historians seem to justify JFK threatening to destroy the entire world over this. At least, I've never seen a single historian condemn JFK for this psychopathic planet-killing threat.
3B) American politicians and bourgeois historians condemn Putin for his invasion, even though JFK was planning to invade Cuba if the installation wasn't halted and reversed, and almost did, accidentally.
4A) The only justification JFK had was that the Soviets were violating the Monroe Doctrine which prevents Soviet/Russian military presence anywhere in the entire WESTERN HEMISPHERE!
4B) Putin and the Russians have MANY security justifications for preventing NATO (it's arch enemy) from moving up to its border with Ukraine: like the fact that it was the Ukrainians who welcomed the Nazi's onto the land of the Soviet Union where they proceeded to in vase the rest of the western Soviet republics and murder 28 million Soviet citizens.
So JFK's response to the Cuban Missile Crisis provides justification for Putin's comparable, though less globally threatening response to the NATO threat in Ukraine.
Despite this omission, this audiobook of 16 college-level lectures provides a very good, pretty easy to understand introduction to the experiences of the Russian and Soviet people during the last century. Every American, especially those now cheerleading for Zelenskyy and Fascist Joe, should familiarize themselves with this material.
#USOUTOFNATO
May 30, 2021
This a series of audio lectures which go as far as the mid 1990s and Boris Yeltsin. I grew up in the cold war and for me, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union were amongst the most surprising and astonishing of world events in my lifetime. What happened in Russia during this period is just mind boggling.
January 8, 2022
Moves all too quickly; and having been written in the 1990s under Yeltsin, is somewhat outdated. Nevertheless, Hamburg does a superb job capturing the personalities at work and the everyday folk affected by Soviet rule. Hamburg closes on a prophetic note, observing that the same questions that plagued Russia before the Bolsheviks are the same questions they are facing now, and by asking whether the empire, sans Soviet, is rising again. With Russia on the Ukrainian border, these questions are more important than ever.
January 15, 2015
I've listened to this as part of the TTC Great Lecture series. Although outdated (published during the Jeltsin presidency) it gives some insights in the Russian politics. The lessons focus mostly on the early Communist period, WOII until the death of Stalin in 1953. The latter Communist years (after Chroestjov) are somewhat less touched upon. This I found a pity. However, all in all a good introduction to Soviet Communism.
July 29, 2023
I've not read Marx yet, but I know he said Capitalism evolves into Communism. I'm sure it's hardly an original observation but the two great communist societies (The Soviets and China) both tried Great Leaps around the necessary capitalist stage and ultimately foundered. I'm not sure how any intellectual could honestly say Marx has been defeated on the global stage. He hasn't. Both of those societies had to contend with a hegemonic full-blown Capitalist society fighting the internal ideologies.
None of this excuses Lenin or Stalin. Stalin in particular was a monster.
It's like saying Malthus was wrong. Malthus wasn't, and will be vindicated by the collapse of our Babel tower. It's a matter of time, nothing else.
It was interesting to hear Hamburg talk about Communists voting for extreme parties that would accelerate the collapse of society. It's a notion that I entertain regularly. Vote Republican, and really let us see the damage that can be done by the flat-thinking free market ideologies. It's not like voting Democrat gets me any closer to a fair society.
It was also interesting to learn that the first Revolution in Saint Petersburg happened without party direction, or without the Bolsheviks taking over. The workers just stopped en masse and deposed the King or Czar or whoever. That took another eight months.
I think this is what will happen in America. Something major will fail, and the lower class (and the middle class realizing they're just the lower class with better voting rights) will consume the powers at the top spontaneously when asked to absorb and bear the burden (again) placed on them by society's managing class.
It's not going to be a matter of planned revolution. It's going to be an open revolt against the social order as it stands that flares up as men en masse decide they aren't going to take it anymore.
None of this excuses Lenin or Stalin. Stalin in particular was a monster.
It's like saying Malthus was wrong. Malthus wasn't, and will be vindicated by the collapse of our Babel tower. It's a matter of time, nothing else.
It was interesting to hear Hamburg talk about Communists voting for extreme parties that would accelerate the collapse of society. It's a notion that I entertain regularly. Vote Republican, and really let us see the damage that can be done by the flat-thinking free market ideologies. It's not like voting Democrat gets me any closer to a fair society.
It was also interesting to learn that the first Revolution in Saint Petersburg happened without party direction, or without the Bolsheviks taking over. The workers just stopped en masse and deposed the King or Czar or whoever. That took another eight months.
I think this is what will happen in America. Something major will fail, and the lower class (and the middle class realizing they're just the lower class with better voting rights) will consume the powers at the top spontaneously when asked to absorb and bear the burden (again) placed on them by society's managing class.
It's not going to be a matter of planned revolution. It's going to be an open revolt against the social order as it stands that flares up as men en masse decide they aren't going to take it anymore.
Read
July 20, 2024Professor Hamburg takes you through Soviet history through the lens of the top leaders and there wasn’t a lot of focus beyond that perspective. I would’ve liked to hear more about society and culture (the parts he touched on were very interesting) but that would probably double the length of this audiobook. Overall, I enjoyed this listen and I think it’s a good snapshot of the period. Hamburg acknowledges that as a historian he can’t narrate all the facets of history in words, only give certain scenes and vignettes to paint a fuller picture. I thought that was self aware and a good way to explain it.
Now these lectures are history too; we’re looking back on a time when people were more optimistic about Russia’s transition to a new system because the future was unknown. The last half hour or so was bittersweet to listen to. Maybe in the hands of better leaders we would have Russia as a powerful democracy on the world stage in 2024. It makes me miss the collaborative energy of Russo-American space projects in the 2000s… but that’s neither here nor there.
Now these lectures are history too; we’re looking back on a time when people were more optimistic about Russia’s transition to a new system because the future was unknown. The last half hour or so was bittersweet to listen to. Maybe in the hands of better leaders we would have Russia as a powerful democracy on the world stage in 2024. It makes me miss the collaborative energy of Russo-American space projects in the 2000s… but that’s neither here nor there.
November 2, 2020
Интересный опыт - вся история Советской России за 12 часов.
Профессор сумел не скатываться до банальностей - это не "Россия для тех, кто о ней ничего не слышал". Не смотря на то, что я в общем все сказанное и так знал, мне все равно было интересно прослушать эти лекции.
На такой ускоренной перемотке бросилось в глаза то, на что раньше не обращал внимание.
Началось все с пары Ленин - Сталин. Идеалист-теоретик, который вселил в головы идею. И далее жесткий и властолюбивый практик, который все развернул, исходя из момента и своих интересов.
И закончилось все парой Горбачев - Ельцин. С ровно такими же ролями.
Профессор изумительно выдержал тональность лекций, как настоящий историк и ученый.
С сопереживанием, но без высокомерия. Изложение фактов, а не толкований. Не скрывая свои впечатления, но четко отделяя их от фактов.
Русские слова в лекции произносятся, конечно, с сильный акцентом, но в целом правильно и к месту.
Профессор сумел не скатываться до банальностей - это не "Россия для тех, кто о ней ничего не слышал". Не смотря на то, что я в общем все сказанное и так знал, мне все равно было интересно прослушать эти лекции.
На такой ускоренной перемотке бросилось в глаза то, на что раньше не обращал внимание.
Началось все с пары Ленин - Сталин. Идеалист-теоретик, который вселил в головы идею. И далее жесткий и властолюбивый практик, который все развернул, исходя из момента и своих интересов.
И закончилось все парой Горбачев - Ельцин. С ровно такими же ролями.
Профессор изумительно выдержал тональность лекций, как настоящий историк и ученый.
С сопереживанием, но без высокомерия. Изложение фактов, а не толкований. Не скрывая свои впечатления, но четко отделяя их от фактов.
Русские слова в лекции произносятся, конечно, с сильный акцентом, но в целом правильно и к месту.
March 13, 2021
This was a really well put together series of lectures. That said, I do have one concern. Done in 1996, this was clearly something that never saw the resurgent Russia under Putin and as such is a little bit dated. Hamburg seems to approach this subject under the assumption that capitalism has completely won, that there will be no more Russian or Soviet threat, and that clearly the United States is ascendant forevermore. There's nothing wrong with that because at the time that's certainly how it appeared. But now 25 years later we know a little better about how things turned out.
If you're looking for a good history this will absolutely fit the bill, but beware some of his predictions of the future. Those might not be as accurate as he'd have thought at the time.
If you're looking for a good history this will absolutely fit the bill, but beware some of his predictions of the future. Those might not be as accurate as he'd have thought at the time.
August 22, 2023
This lecture series on Soviet Communism originated in 1996 : it gives an informative tour of the Czarist Old Regime, Lenin and Stalin but it peters out after the death of Stalin.There is very little ,for example , on Leonid Brezhev , one of the longest serving Secretary Generals of the Soviet Union. And I believe Professor Hamburg was too harsh on Mikhail Gorbachev a humane leader, a rarity in Russian history.But he makes prescient points from his vantage point of the mid 90s that the authoritarian and imperialist impulses of Russia have not abated since the Fall of Communism and alas that has been proven to be true in the reign of Vladimir Putin.
June 24, 2017
The title was a touch misleading-- I might replace the word "communism" with "Union," since the lectures did much more to describe the politics and leaders of the Soviet Union than the economic system. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting survey of Russian and Soviet history and a good foundation for a study of Russian past, present and future. Not as much information about the practice of socialism besides its setting the stage well for dictators to take power and commit egregious crimes against their people.
March 11, 2020
A solid Great Course. Hamburg is a lively speaker, rapping his fist on the table for emphasis. Unlike in any of the others I've listened to, you can also hear the sound/camera person chuckling in the background, which is endearing rather than annoying. The substance itself is a highly condensed, but at the same time comprehensive overview of 20th century Russia. The only minus is that the final lectures are badly dated. New Russia or New USSR is an even more timely question in the time of Putin. Yeltsin's days seem so innocent in hindsight.
March 1, 2021
This stops prior to to power, but gives a great explanation of the stage that was set for his rise. Further, I had a general understanding of the atrocities under Stalin and the sort of bad nature of the party during the century, but wow, the details and numbers, the famines and purges, just aweful. He does a good job of covering world war I and II, but skips entirely over Vietnam and bay of pigs, which I am sure was intentional, but it would have been nice to have some more information about the cold war and the proxy wars. Otherwise, great lectures and very informative.
July 6, 2021
This was a really good high level overview of the history of the Soviet Union. It does a good job of explaining the politics and main events of the time period it deals with. The problem with this and most high level overviews is that it begs for greater detail. So if you look at this as a way to find topics that you can take a deeper dive into than this is perfect. It is also perfect if you just want a cliff notes version so you can fill in some gaps in your knowledge. Just don't expect a comprehensive exhaustive case study.
December 12, 2019
3.5 stars. This was a good high-level 100-year review of Russian history. It is not great at getting into detail on any one aspect though. It left me wanting to dig in more to things like collectivization, the Gulag, the famines, Stalin, Bolshevism vs Stalinism vs socialism, and the secret police. If you want a big picture idea of what happened in 20th century Russia, then you will not be disappointed. The professor is fantastic (reminds me a bit of Simon Schama).
August 28, 2019
Professor Hamburg is a good lecturer, but ultimately I wished he had spent more time discussing details rather than overall themes. I wanted more Soviet history post-WWII, and he failed to deliver. Good series of lectures, but I had expected more. Unfortunately I failed to realize this was a history of the state of communism in the Soviet Union until the lecture series had concluded.
August 13, 2019
A good refresher of world's history. Everything from Nicolai the second through modern Russia. It gave a good idea of the reasons behind current events and a better understanding of the cold War. Very interesting in deed.
April 1, 2021
The author limited his lectures to internal Russian discussions, not mentioning Poland, Chernobyl, European diplomacy, Reagan and Thatcher pressure in the demise of Communist Russia. Really diminishes his story.
July 9, 2017
Definitely worth a listen! A great introduction to Russian history.
February 16, 2018
Gary never forgets to mention how innocent jews are and how much he likes them.
January 30, 2020
I learned a lot about Soviet politics but this book was light on explaining the atrocities.
May 4, 2020
Extremely clear and concise.
Seemed to be free from huge western prejudice but I guess Russians would be the judge of that.
Seemed to be free from huge western prejudice but I guess Russians would be the judge of that.
May 19, 2021
A solid overview of the Soviet Union. Helped expand my limited knowledge of the topic. Listened on audiobook.
February 23, 2022
📰 Following the Russia situation in the news has stressed me out this year. I didn’t understand the narrative so decidedly I took on a mission to see if the internet is fear mongering or if there is legitimate concern of war. I mean, we all know the news sources need to make money too. Unfortunately, the only things I knew about Russia were from reading War and Peace in 2020, so I started a study!
After completing “Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism History of 20th Century Russia” I have a sympathetic awareness and minute understanding of the inhumanity and type of rule the Russian peoples/Eastern Slavics have been under. It really gives perspective to the complaints of Americans. I highly recommend this study but DO NOT recommend googling videos of the events because it’s really hard to forget those images.
Currently I’m in the middle of “Capitalism vs Socialism Comparing Economic Systems” because I need a break from Gulags and Terror Famines… but it is also very interesting.🪆💔
I still don’t know to what severity the Russian/Ukrainian conflict is but there is some sort of intersection between knowledge and peace that I now hold.
After completing “Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism History of 20th Century Russia” I have a sympathetic awareness and minute understanding of the inhumanity and type of rule the Russian peoples/Eastern Slavics have been under. It really gives perspective to the complaints of Americans. I highly recommend this study but DO NOT recommend googling videos of the events because it’s really hard to forget those images.
Currently I’m in the middle of “Capitalism vs Socialism Comparing Economic Systems” because I need a break from Gulags and Terror Famines… but it is also very interesting.🪆💔
I still don’t know to what severity the Russian/Ukrainian conflict is but there is some sort of intersection between knowledge and peace that I now hold.
May 7, 2022
Decent recording but they left in some annoying coughing from the audience.
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