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this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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the_dunk_tank
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I’m halfway through it now. I really want to like it… but it does feel a little unfocused and meandering. And surprisingly, I don’t feel like he’s actually talked all that much about Stalin yet. I’ve had to take a couple breaks in reading it so maybe that’s why, idk.
I understand what you mean. It can be a slog. I think he does compare quite a lot and goes further into detail with his comparison than with Stalin/USSR. But it does help put both Stalin and USSR into their historical and political contexts.
More than anything, I feel like Losurdo does a great job of showing how the tale of Stalin is distorted and doesn't hold up logically. He doesn't really argue as a full apologia and he doesn't go into detail into neither the politics nor the personal life of Stalin, but he does a great job of explaining or attacking the context and shows how as a result the Stalinist myth is untenable. This is another reason why I don't understand the reaction against the book, he doesn't argue that Stalin was perfect and can't be accused of doing unethical things. But, in the context, Stalin did pretty well even when he didn't have many choices.
Between this book and Getty's Origins of the Great Purges, one can really see how Stalin wasn't the dictatorial authoritarian that people always criticize. There was a lot of confusion and chaos in Soviet Union at the time but there were real attempts at good Communist policy too, and Stalin's political project was clearly not a bloodthirsty reign of genocidal terror akin to Hitler's.
On closer inspection, I think the problem was more how I was reading it. Life dictated that for weeks I was only able to read two or three pages every other day or so. Read a bigger chunk over the weekend and it seemed way less disjointed. It’s definitely a good book.
Cool, man! I'm glad it worked out better for you. But I feel you, I also had to read it spread over a longer period of time than I wanted because of shit coming up. That's also why I felt like it was a slog, I wanted to read a chapter at a time but sometimes Losurdo's chapters are too long and stopping at sections can make you lose the larger argument of the chapter. I wish the chapters were shorter but it's still a great book otherwise!