Reddit Reddit reviews Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel

We found 6 Reddit comments about Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel
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6 Reddit comments about Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel:

u/TheLiberator117 · 9 pointsr/facepalm

realistically, none have happened yet. The USSR had its merits but it wasn't a fully Marxist state, in fact Marx would have hated the USSR probably. If a sane person instead of stalin was at the helm of the USSR in the 30s and 40s maybe it wouldn't have been as bad with the genocide and all. However, the stereotypical image of the USSR is the bread line right, well for a significant chunk of the time that was wrong and there were none, not from the 40s to the 80s. If you want a really good book about early soviet structure and society I would recommend behind the urals by John Scott ( https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Urals-American-Worker-Russias/dp/0253205360 ) he has a bit of a leftist view but he makes no attempt to disguise the problems and the feelings in the soviet union. I could go on for hours about why the USSR failed and why other states turning to more socialist principals wouldn't (Sweeden hello!) but I am actually writing a paper about that now. If you would like you can PM me if I wasn't clear on anything I would be happy to explain in depth, I am rushing a bit through this response to get back to that paper though. Like I said just PM me any questions you may have.

u/paulatreides0 · 8 pointsr/neoliberal

>Also, I’ve seen commies argue that “the Soviet Union rapidly industrialized under socialism and brought millions out of poverty. It’s growth is extremely impressive since it went from a backwards feudal state to an industrialized superpower”. How does one respond to that?

That working conditions in the USSR in the 20s and 30s made the workshops lefties like to complain about look like first world factories by comparison.

See: Behind the Urals which is just one big, in-depth example.

And this isn't even factoring in the huge amount of de facto slave labour that the USSR exploited to aid its industrialization vis-a-vis the gulag system.

u/cassander · 4 pointsr/PropagandaPosters

>It would have been if nukes weren't invented. WWIII would have occured. Notice how WWI and WII were so close together? Industrialied humanity has a fetish for massive wars.

and communism would have solved that problem how?

>You act as though capitlists just sat back and let communism thrive:

So all the failures of communism can be blamed on a few minor interventions in a civil war in the 1920s? Including the failures of communism in cuba, china, vietnam, cambodia, and eastern europe? ANd that none of the support given by the west to communism at different times mattered at all? And neither did communist attempts to undermine capitalism?

>Its leadership was Stalin, and in no way related to what Lenin/Trotsky had in mind.

How absurd. Lenin set up the checka, lenin set up the red terror, and lenin wrote enthusiastically of violent, bloody revolution his entire life, as did marx. The differences between him and stalin were, at best, a matter of degree, not kind.

u/[deleted] · 4 pointsr/communism

For the USSR I would recommend Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941, Red Bread, and Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel to start. All of those are accessible and written by westerners or emigres. None of them are uncritical of the USSR, and they all at some point exhibit what I feel are some unfair prejudices, but they are definitely worth reading. Red Bread in particular is sort of anti-communist. Also, read Lenin!

u/bsmite7 · 2 pointsr/hockey

Finally getting back into this thread hours later... If you're up for a really neat read that gets into this a bit more.