cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4870654
Reading Losurdo’s Stalin book has opened my eyes to just how horrific things were for black folks from the end of Reconstruction to the start of WWII in particular.
Yep. The PDF of it is free here: https://www.iskrabooks.org/stalin-history-and-critique
It was done in part by the guy from the Guerilla History podcast.
The book is largely taking claims / slander aimed at the Stalin-era Soviet Union and showing how it was largely untrue but also how things were way worse in the West. I know in one section he brings up how the prison system in the US South in the period I mentioned was pretty much just what anti-communists think the gulags were (and of course mostly it was black men who suffered). I don’t recall the exact context in which Losurdo brings up lynchings, though. I remember the focus was on how white society in the south wholly participated in it, not like it was just isolated incidents of just a few participants (lynchings were advertised in the newspapers in advance and often hundreds or thousands of people would show up).
Would you recommend any other Stalin reading as essential before Losurdo’s take?
I haven’t read much in detail about Stalin to be honest, but I am wary of starting reading about him with a polemic (but then, all history is polemic - so, idk).
