I’m a history major who recently graduated and I have been wanting to deep-dive more into Russian history. I’m very familiar with European/US/Latin American history but have always been fascinated with Russia. I want to read something regarding the KGB/Cold War period but really open to anything.
Thanks!
I read “the romanovs” by simon sebag montefiore, its an easy to read history book but it only narrates the romanov dinsaty, from 1600 (ish) to 1918, so nothing to to with the KGB or Cold War. However if you are into Russian History i think its a good book to start with.
I am not a historian but was a major in Russian language at university.
I have found great benefit in Richard Pipes' "Russia under the Old Regime" as an introduction to Russian history. He has also published "A Concise History of the Russian Revolution" and "Russia under the Bolshevik Regime". However, he was National Security advisor to the Reagan White House and, more germane, he had not benefited from the flood of material released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union when he penned the latter books.
For the XXth century and the Soviet Union, look up Anne Appelbaum (journalist, Pulitzer Prize for "Gulag: a History", 2003); Robert Service (historian, "Lenin", "Trotsky"); Laurence Rees (historian, "Behind Closed Door, Stalin, the Nazis and the West", 2008); Christopher Andrew (historian), Vasili Mitrokhin, (former senior officer of Soviet Union Foreign Intelligence service) "The Mitrokhin Archive, The KGB in Europe and the West" (1999) and "The Mitrokhin Archive, The KBG and the World" (2005).
For Stalin, your best bet would be Isaac Deutscher (historian, Marxist) "Stalin: a Political Biography" (1949 and 1961). He was a Marxist, true, but a real historian. Sebag-Montefiore's treatment of Stalin is history-lite. Deutscher also wrote a magisterial biography of Trotsky.
Please read Nadezhda Mandelstam's "Hope Against Hope" and "Hope Abandoned", her harrowing, moving memoirs of the life and death of the poet Osip Mandelstam in the Soviet Union's thirties. They put flesh on the rattling bones of the period.
I also enjoyed (if that's the right term) "The Harvest of Sorrow, Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine" by Robert Conquest. However, Anne Appelbaum has revisited the topic and may have newer materials to offer.
Sorry to say I have nothing about the Revolution proper excepting John Reed's classic "Ten Days That Shook the World" and nothing either about Lenin or the Civil War. Ì hope others can remedy these deficits.