> I don't know that much about the Soviet Union. > I have been following some leftist stuff and saw this article recently by Trotsky. so Trotsky has a better

> I don't know that much about the Soviet Union. > I have been following some leftist stuff and saw this article recently by Trotsky. so Trotsky has a better reputation than most leadership from the early USSR; he didn't last long in power. It's worth studying the USSR as an example of how a revolution can simultaneously fail and succeed; how leftists fail, sort of, how ordinary people survive. A lot of blinders were on people in the early years of the USSR - much of what was said positive was wrong; much of what was said negative later on wasn't really too right either. Again, blinders. What's incontrovertible is that the violence was endemic to the system for decades; Stalin's time was really bad. How that affected people... that's debated. I've read some about the USSR and Russian history; there's libraries written on it by now. Recent scholarship seems to be better IMO; less emotionally charged and tainted by Cold War attitudes. I thought these authors' work was well done - it captures a lot of the pre-1937 mode of the USSR in a relatively humorous way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilf_and_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilf_and_Petrov