Ask Lemmygrad

812 readers

33 users here now

A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Any Books About the History of the Russian Revolution from a Marxist analysis? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am currently looking at a bunch of books for a project I need to do. I need to find two books, monographs (peer reviewed!), about the same topic but from different perspectives.

The two analysis types I want to compare are Queer and Marxist historiographies. While I was juggling a bunch of topics I settled on the Russian Revolution because I found this book:

Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent by Dan Healey

Clearly it fits my Queer analysis and all other criteria. I have not read it yet but the reviews make it seem good. The problem I am facing now is finding a Marxist historiography of the Russian Revolution, which you’d think would be easy but for some reason I cannot find a proper work. I did see Walter Rodney’s * The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World* but I do not know if it is peer reviewed, and the publisher might disqualify it from being right for my project (Dan Healey’s book is published by University of Chicago Press). I don't think it’s a bad book but I am certain my professor would disapprove. While I am not completely locked in to choosing a book from a historian I would prefer it as at my school there is a belief in the “supremacy of the historian” if that makes sense.

So my question is, is there a Marxist historiography of the Russia Revolution in book form? And if you are aware of Rodney’s book being peer reviewed I would appreciate the insight. My school’s library is useless and Reddit has not helped either (they keep giving Trotsky and 10 Days that Shook the World, these are fine and all but not for my project).

top 4 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Don't know if it fits, but did you check Neil Faulkner’s A People’s History of the Russian Revolution? Presumably he is Marxist historian.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 hour ago

I actually did see this book on a thread here on the Grad but when I was looking up reviews for it I found this: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/a-peoples-history-that-is-less-than-inspiring/

Which gave me pause, if it was anything like Howard Zinn’s book then I’d use it in a heart beat but this don’t seem like the best analysis of the revolution. Unless the review is completely wrong, of course.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 hours ago

I’ll be honest, Trotsky’s massive tome (I think it’s over 900 pages) on the Revolution is actually pretty decent and is surprisingly free (for the most part) of his typical brain worms.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago

If it helps, the Dan Healey book covers the 1870s Tsarist era up to the 1930s. Marxist historiography tends to look at working class history of an era, don’t know if that helps at all.

I am quite embarrassed with the amount of questions and help I ask for, I feel like I should be able to do this on my own but I’m having a hard time. Although I am glad I was able to find one book on my own.