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BrokenGameboy posted:Any good works on the collapse of the USSR? It's incredibly dense and impenetrable but the work that helped me best understand it was Alexei Yurchak's Everything was forever until it was no more
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Dec 27, 2019 16:03
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Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted
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Dec 27, 2019 16:29
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vyelkin posted:It's incredibly dense and impenetrable but the work that helped me best understand it was Alexei Yurchak's Everything was forever until it was no more I got this for Christmas and skimmed parts of it and yeah it's def gonna be a long read, looks great though!
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Dec 27, 2019 18:36
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vyelkin posted:It's incredibly dense and impenetrable but the work that helped me best understand it was Alexei Yurchak's Everything was forever until it was no more another interesting book that deals with the fall of the ussr is the dead hand which looks at all the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and research that went on between the two sides during the Cold War that just stopped once things fell and the scramble to sweep everything under the rug
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Dec 28, 2019 08:30
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https://twitter.com/unabanned/status/1212775711645323271 https://twitter.com/unabanned/status/1212776997363101697
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Jan 3, 2020 07:04
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That checks out with the conspiracy theories about the dulles/bush cabal.
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Jan 3, 2020 19:15
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vyelkin posted:It's incredibly dense and impenetrable but the work that helped me best understand it was Alexei Yurchak's Everything was forever until it was no more I second this, but also second that it's reactor-shielding levels of dense even by academic writing standards. Yurchak sure loves him some theorywanking. Henrick Smith's The New Russians was also pretty good but I read it like twenty years ago and don't know if it still holds up or not. Tangential, anyone interested on how outsiders reported on the late Soviet Union might find Robert Kaiser's Russia: The People and the Power interesting. He wrote it in the 70s on late-stagnation Russia, and while his western biases show it's not a bad book from that period. I also just finished Victor Sebestyen's Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, the Master of Terror, which is insightful but as the title suggests pretty focused on seeing the revolution as a disaster, though not an unmitigated one.
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Jan 3, 2020 19:27
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So there's this Washington Post infographic going around: https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1215122775456829440 and I dug up this old post from 2013 that gives another perspective on it:        or, to put it another way, a person born in 1905 wouldn't have seen the US at war for 34.8% of their lifetime, it would have been more like 98%, counting only two years, 1977 and 1979.
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Jan 10, 2020 08:11
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Dreylad posted:The Belgians were so godawful that turn-of-the-century Britain spent some of its time admonishing the Belgians for their lovely colonial behaviour. Obviously the Brits were huge hypocrites but still. Most Europeans thought the Belgians were horrible until the Germans invaded and pulverized their country in WW1. Even then it took a few years for public sympathy to really emerge for them. I know I’m responding to a month‐old post, but the thread moves slow. The British made a similar play forty years earlier, denouncing France for using corvée labour on the Suez Canal. The French responded “what about that railway you built from Cairo to Suez not a decade ago?
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Jan 10, 2020 12:01
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Platystemon posted:I know I’m responding to a month‐old post, but the thread moves slow. hahah goddamn I didn't know that one. Truly the Brits are legends at this kinda crap
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Jan 10, 2020 13:34
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https://twitter.com/sahouraxo/status/1215693225685549057
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Jan 11, 2020 04:59
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Reminds me of this lecture which popped up for me on youtube a while ago. According to him, the US' position has sole superpower after the cold war ended allowed it to let go of realpolitik and attempt to spread liberal values worldwide, with the idea that this would fix everything. He says something similar about Iraq and Afghanistan being part of a larger plan to topple governments in the region and bring about liberal democracy by force. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni9rncx8ceA
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Jan 11, 2020 10:29
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BrokenGameboy posted:Any good works on the collapse of the USSR? Soviet history and lost alternatives by stephen cohn
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Jan 11, 2020 10:36
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Dreylad posted:hahah goddamn I didn't know that one. Truly the Brits are legends at this kinda crap All this recent Iran stuff reminds me of how the UK and the Soviet Union surprise invaded Iran in WW2 and carved it up between the two of them and the Iranians appealed to the still neutral USA because conquering helpless countries that didn't do anything to you was supposedly wrong according to FDR and our official government response was "lol".
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Jan 11, 2020 11:35
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current events have really brought to light my embarrassing lack of knowledge on the middle east anyone have any recommendations on history up to "current events"? the extent of my research begins and ends with the ethnic cleansing of palestine
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Jan 11, 2020 13:35
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Grevling posted:Reminds me of this lecture which popped up for me on youtube a while ago. According to him, the US' position has sole superpower after the cold war ended allowed it to let go of realpolitik and attempt to spread liberal values worldwide, with the idea that this would fix everything. He says something similar about Iraq and Afghanistan being part of a larger plan to topple governments in the region and bring about liberal democracy by force. Walt's book The Hell of Good Intentions is a pretty good analysis of the same issue. I should probably look into Mearsheimer's, since I'd always see his and Walt's book advertised/reviewed side-by-side, but I've found Mearsheimer so insufferable and at time simplistic in his analysis that I keep putting him off. Karenina has issued a correction as of 17:23 on Jan 11, 2020 |
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Jan 11, 2020 17:20
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God Hole posted:current events have really brought to light my embarrassing lack of knowledge on the middle east Max Blumenthal's Management of Savagery was pretty good
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Jan 11, 2020 17:55
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vyelkin posted:It's incredibly dense and impenetrable but the work that helped me best understand it was Alexei Yurchak's Everything was forever until it was no more Just finished this book yesterday. It was a great read; it really went into the disconnect between performative and constative speech in the institutions and how this led to deterratorialization. I grew up in a cult, so I strangely have first hand experience seeing this stuff in action although in a completely different context; it made understanding this work a lot more easy. I definitely recommend this book to anyone else interested in the topic.
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Jan 11, 2020 18:47
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I started Legacy of Ashes and I feel like it's a bit too kind to the CIA considering how vile I know they're going to be. Killing Hope this isn't going to be, I guess. The Americans being completely clueless at what Stalin wants is pretty funny though.
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Jan 12, 2020 00:04
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Does it still count if it's current history? Because I'm looking for good books on understanding modern China.
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Mar 12, 2020 09:09
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MonsieurChoc posted:I started Legacy of Ashes and I feel like it's a bit too kind to the CIA considering how vile I know they're going to be. Killing Hope this isn't going to be, I guess. Sheila Fitzpatrick wrote about this in the LRB a few months ago and she obviously explains it better than me, but basically the general consensus among educated people in the West until about the 70s was that Soviets were so alien and inhuman that they might as well be Martians because their motivations were so inscrutable and incomprehensible. Then along came the revisionist historians and they were like "uhhhhh what if we just study the Soviets as if they're human beings like us???" and that explained everything the USSR ever did way better than the "evil communist robot aliens" paradigm but it still never got through to the cold warriors
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Mar 12, 2020 13:32
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BrokenGameboy posted:Does it still count if it's current history? Because I'm looking for good books on understanding modern China. not quite modern china but “The Great Divergence” by Kenneth Pomeranz will give you excellent background on early modern China and thus, as a knock on, the origins of modern Chinese stuff I read it a few years ago in grad school but I remember really enjoying it. it’s also a great way to address chauvinistic western historiography
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Mar 12, 2020 23:06
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Once upon a time there was a thing in America called "slavery". With slavery you could actually own other human beings just like you own a hairbrush or a skillet or a jar of honey. You could go down out of your plantation house and cut off all of your slaves middle toes if you wanted to. You could make them all shave off their own eyebrows for your own sick amusement. You could name every man and every woman "Jerry". You could make Jerry marry Jerry in a Christian ceremony, and force them to gently caress, and make you a kid, and you could name that kid Jerry. And that kid could grow up and someday get away from you and escape to freedom and write their story about how their name is Jerry, and it's always been Jerry, and their wife calls them Jerry, and their kids know them as Jerry, and it's all because you owned them the same way you owned the hinges of the door to your guestroom. That's hosed up. Slavery was hosed up. People in the 21st century still defend the institution of slavery, and that's especially hosed up. People have plantation weddings. What the gently caress is wrong with people.
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May 8, 2020 07:06
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That doesn't belong in the history thread; it's too recent. Right now the owners/masters are currently in open rebellion, they're outside protesting that their slaves and servants are on some kind of forced workers strike. They want them to get back to work even knowing that it will kill a lot of them, if only to make the point that they're still the owners. The actual legal slaves in our prisons, and the undocumented slaves in our camps and on our farms, are even being wasted all at once for the hell of it, by spiteful prison guards who flaunt hand sanitizer in front of them or force them to repackage it but won't let them have any.
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May 8, 2020 07:58
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https://twitter.com/zackbeauchamp/status/1285217971741298688/photo/1
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Jul 21, 2020 04:06
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The American Conservative posted:Ultimately, that’s for the Left to decide. In their heart of hearts, they must know all this grave talk about an imminent neo-Nazi coup is utter nonsense. How could they not? There must be a sliver of rationality left in their souls which can see that the only fascist jackboots in America today are those calling themselves Antifa. They must understand that this drive to completely reorient American life around the latest definition of “woke”—by force, if necessary—will only succeed in radicalizing the Right. And, who knows? Maybe the Right is waiting for an excuse to radicalize.
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Jul 21, 2020 20:10
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Living during dramatic historical events sucks. Can't America go back to slowly rusting on the lawn?
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Jul 22, 2020 00:40
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Living during dramatic historical events sucks. Can't America go back to slowly rusting on the lawn? Welcome to the Italy, France and Britain zone bicth
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Jul 22, 2020 00:50
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The Chad Hoplite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaaWkDnY2bA
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Jul 22, 2020 02:25
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Wanting to live in a slowly rusting America was just my Southern roots and my age pushing forward, gently caress that, bring on the progress, bring on the awfulness, bring on the days that shake the world.
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Jul 22, 2020 03:02
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I know the german scientist thing is from like 5 pages ago but that was fascinating thanks for sharing it. Their presumptions vs. what I know of the Manhattan project are pretty amusing, but among other things this bit had be going WTF:Heisenberg the physicist not the meth cook posted:Yes. (Pause) About a year ago, I heard from SEGNER (?) from the Foreign Office that the Americans had threatened to drop a uranium bomb on Dresden if we didn't surrender soon. At that time I was asked whether I thought it possible, and, with complete conviction, I replied: 'No'. Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Wanting to live in a slowly rusting America was just my Southern roots and my age pushing forward, gently caress that, bring on the progress, bring on the awfulness, bring on the days that shake the world. Maybe America will one day get sensible and tire of having history happen to it like Europe finally did, but until then lol if you think you've lived in boring times. I saw the wall come down and the USSR, a force so seemingly powerful that that every single loving science fiction author during the cold war thought would it outlive humanity, that pretty much came down with it. Yet now the USA is somehow managing to lose the cold war because powerful GOP jerks think Conservative Russians are their allies - they don't understand that they're not collaborating to bring down the left so much as they're pushing everywhere they can to bring down the whole of the USA. lol @ getting your rear end kicked by the ghost of a dead enemy.
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Jul 22, 2020 12:13
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The Sausages posted:I know the german scientist thing is from like 5 pages ago but that was fascinating thanks for sharing it. Their presumptions vs. what I know of the Manhattan project are pretty amusing, but among other things this bit had be going WTF: States at war still speak to each other constantly. poo poo like throwing the Talibans ambassador into a torture prison are the exception not the rule.
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Jul 22, 2020 12:22
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The Sausages posted:It's left me wondering a couple of things, 1- could this be linked to push to bomb Dresden? and 2- How the hell would America threaten Germany in the middle of a shooting war? For that matter, how does credible communication between hostile states at war actually take place, and are communications of that nature ever available to public researchers? You generally communicate unofficially through neutral countries who maintain regular diplomatic relations with both belligerents. In WW2 specifically I recall that e.g. Sweden often acted as a proxy.
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Jul 22, 2020 12:45
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Qatar is the big one in the ME. Sometimes Oman if people remember they exist.
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Jul 22, 2020 13:18
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Yeah that makes a whole lot of sense. I sort of knew about the Sweden thing, I was wondering more why Germany would take such a threat meaningfully. It could be a bunch of nothing anyway - I'm not aware of any other credible sources about the USA threatening Germany with atomic weapons in 1944. Heisenberg seems credible but his source (some random Foreign Office dude) most certainly isn't. I can only imagine if such a threat was actually made that it was dismissed offhand with nazi logic - German physicists had already said they couldn't do it, therefore the "inferior" American physicists can only fail to produce such a weapon. The Einstein-Szilard letter is an interesting document: wikipedia posted:After receiving the draft, Einstein dictated the letter first in German. On returning to Columbia University, Szilárd dictated the letter in English to a young departmental stenographer, Janet Coatesworth. She later recalled that when Szilárd mentioned extremely powerful bombs, she "was sure she was working for a nut". Ending the letter with "Yours truly, Albert Einstein" did nothing to alter this impression. Both the English letter and a longer explanatory letter were then posted to Einstein for him to sign. The letter dated 2 August and addressed to President Roosevelt warned that: In response, Roosevelt ordered that preliminary research be performed on Uranium, which has culminated into the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and America's unceasing leadership in nuclear technology and weaponry. As soon as Einstein learned that the Germans had no chance in hell of creating a bomb in wartime, he regretted signing the letter.
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Jul 24, 2020 15:28
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Living during dramatic historical events sucks. Can't America go back to slowly rusting on the lawn? rusting, huh. I took the rust-pill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mhZBLUyybo
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Jul 24, 2020 17:50
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The Sausages posted:I know the german scientist thing is from like 5 pages ago but that was fascinating thanks for sharing it. Their presumptions vs. what I know of the Manhattan project are pretty amusing, but among other things this bit had be going WTF: Another fun fact that despite the Manhattan Project being a really expensive project, the B-29 bomber project ended up being more expensive for a overall project cost (2 billion vs 3 billion USD) http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/B/-/B-29_Superfortress.htm
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Jul 25, 2020 02:35
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The U.S. effectively committed to not drop atomic bombs on Germany in 1943, when all B-29s were routed to the Pacific. The B-29 was the only model America had that was capable of carrying bombs as large as the early atomics.
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Jul 25, 2020 03:00
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Seems some poo poo went down at a recent conference on early American history. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1284459556068876289.html
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Jul 25, 2020 05:24
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Wikipedia posted:A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air. What exactly was Einstein imagining there? Just a big cargo ship with the bomb in it sailing right up to a major port? Prior to figuring out how to transport bombs by air, was there significant R&D done towards sea transport? I feel like the modern Poseidon torpedo is basically the culmination of this idea, but what were policy makers (be they Allied or Axis) thinking of as a delivery mechanism at the time? Were we ever "close" to seeing the first atom bomb used in warfare being detonated on a ship in port?
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Jul 25, 2020 15:39
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