Thread by @Irkutyanin1

Jonathan Smele is one of those few people who needs to be better known as a man doing the most significant heavy lifting in English language material on the Russian Civil War currently.

This thread with choice bits of his bibliography will be further annotated by myself.

Just going to note here that this is something of a lasting flaw of Slavic departments, usually they want you to know English, Russian, another Slavic Language, and a Western European “research language” usually German or French.

And requirements for historians is even less Slav

Very promising start, you have the IU lists (good for updating on recently punblished/unpublished theses)

The Arans bibliography for Emigres which was the core of the Hoover Institute’s publications for decades.

And the Blitstein bibliography shows declining English publishing

My Californian and Canadian friends could do well to see these guides to first hand collections of memoirs correspondence and personal materials that are kept in Toronto, Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and Nova Scotia.

There is no way this all stuff has been looked through.

Some anonymous guy put the Davis book online, which reviews the utter shock of a Russian historians as the edifice of history came down under Yeltsin. It was a historical coup we should take note of.

gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php…

Other people I’ve mentioned, read or scanned.

@messi_ma1444

I’m going to quote you besides to let you take a look at the Kotkin review of Soviet Historiography post 1991. I think you might be interested.

scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/…

Academic International Press is an infuriating example that the absolute best we have is barely making it to press.

“Soviet Documents” is up to 9 volumes, a few of these surveys have been discontinued and rarely come up.

Smele’s take on Pipes is similar to my own.

General Surveys of the Civil War in English.

Interestingly he seems to gravitate to Mawdsley as the best English Language single volume account. I had never given him my attention due to my bias against unknown English names.

May change that soon.

gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php…

Recently the point was made that philanthropy doesn’t really by anything useful to the domestic public anymore, and has no vision independent to the modern philanthropist.

When you look at the list of emigres who wrote the Economic history of the War, I think you see this.

The Solokov investigation of the Tsar’s murder was translated into French but not English despite the plethora of books on the subject that indeed continue to be written. Radzinsky’s biography is savaged more than archconservative Oldenburg in the blurbs.

Smele sees George Katkov’s historiography of Russian liberals and freemasonry as too hot to handle but includes it here prominently.

Hasegawa, the best stand alone historian of February from the mainstream, receives high praise (he is not kind to the liberals either)

Just kidding lmao he went full hog on this.

These are great articles to read, and I suggest every follower who can look these up and scihub them.

This is critical to understanding the liberals-social democrats-trudoviks worked together despite ideology.

Kornilov Affair historiography showing the plethora of hidden or ill published works on the Kerensky push to eliminate “Thermidor” to placate the Bolsheviks.

The studies on the Cheka, (there are more memoirs) and the Red Army/Komsomol as engines of state violence

The Bolsheviks tried to ideologize all ex soldiers they could get to serve, but also militarized ideologically allied factions wherever they could to beat White mobilization

Soviet Foreign policy and the immediate sponsorship of foreign revolutionary movements even before the fronts against the whites had stabilized.

Debo’s works are great

Please take a look at the last page full of Soviet-Anglo connections and the Communist outreach.

Rare books on the Soviet-Spartacist connection and the deliberate nursing of the German and Bavarian revolutions through the foreign missions to Germany as well as the Early Soviet-IRA connections that would grow into the Provos

Additional important monographs on the Bolshevik Third International and the total ownership of the Italian Communist party of the early Interwar, and the deep penetration of the Bolsheviks into Catalonia and labor organizations in Spain.

Limited books on the even more forgotten Hungarian and Iranian Soviet governments in the WW1 “continuation” we don’t particularly integrate well into 20th century historiography at the moment.

German sources on the occupation of Eastern Europe, untranslated, especially of the Baltic and Ukraine, but also of the lonesome and ignored diplomatic mission in Moscow that begged the foreign office to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

Also Ritter’s four volume shit on Fischer.

The Allied Interventions in Russia and the criticisms of the disjointed and objectiveless campaigns. Strakhovsky is very good on demonstrating a complete lethargy of the campaign because of politics back home concisely.

Memoirs of the even more confused Ukrainian mission.

British war and diplomacy in its 5 front aborted intervention, Ullman is magnificent in this regard and shows how bad the War was for British projection.

There are also a number of monographs on the British at the Baku oil fields and the mission to Sinkiang.

British naval action on the Baltic and the interventions role in the independence of Finland and the Baltic states (Hovi is rare)

Then the other Hovi’s 2 Volume review of the French whose mission Wrangle was condemnatory of.

The American Wilsonian Russia intervention documents

Wilsonian diplomacy in Russia reviewed in full. The studies here are barely augmented some 20 years later.

Interestingly Link’s full biography of Wilson is excluded here.

Walworth is particularly good on describing the goals and through posterity the failure of the Wilsonians

The Michigan 339th US Infantry, the “Polar Bears”

And the Siberian intervention on the side of Admiral Kolchak with heavy criticism of its conduct.

Victor Miroslav Fic jumps out at me, he had written one of the better accounts of the Czechoslovak Legion and it’s rebellion.

And the next section, dedicated exclusively to the Czechoslovaks, features Fic’s 2vol.

For anyone who studies the Russian Revolution from our side, the Czechoslovak Revolt should at least be as remembered as Warsaw in 1920.

It should be counted as one of the greatest 20c events

The White Movement and the South of Russia front.

Brinkley and Kenez are the best accounts of the internal white front.

I had never heard of Procyk, but that overview between the Whites and Ukrainian nationalists sounds like a good further source to look at.

Siberian materials of Admiral Kolchak and Baron Ungern Sternberg including more than a few rare memoirs of soldiers who served under the, that I had never seen before.

Smele posts like 8 of his own writings.

The white emigres abroad, in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Paris, Prague, Nationalist Spain, and importantly, Weimar Germany.

Louis Duplex wrote a 2 volume ideological history on National Bolshevism which includes the involvement of Weimar Berlin’s emigre population.

Robert Service and Volkoganov rank high in the Lenin biographies to Smele. Service’s 3 volume non abridged biography is hard to obtain, but is online and his single volume is a popular paperback.

Fascinating state of Stalin historiography before Montefiore and Kotkin.

@messi_ma1444

This is what makes Kotkin so good imo. Outside of Volkogonov, no revisionist had really broached the subject in toto, despite him towering over the 20th century more than any other figure.

All other sources are Stalin through the direct lens of Trotsky.

In 2003 there were some 3000+ secondary pieces on Lenin

5000+ pieces and three bibliographies on Trotsky literature

But barely a single non-Trotskyite monograph on Stalin

Robert Service almost got kicked out of Stanford for his negative Trotsky bio.

The life of Israel Lazaravich Gelfand, known as AL Parvus or “Helphand” who was the critical monetary contributor and conduit of German money to Lenin In Petersburg as well as a major force in preventing Lenin’s removal by Ludendorff.

gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php…

Sources on the peasantry and the end of the rural civilization of the Russian Empire.

This aspect is under emphasized in the conceptions of the revolution, Civil War, and the famines generally, but the Russian countryside preserved by Prokhudin Gorsky does not exist anymore.

Materials on the Famine of 1921-22 and the American Relief Administration.

The most interesting literature here are the retrospectives which dive into the political realities that Hoover and the Quakers ensured that the Bolshevik government survived in 1921.

The Bolsheviks, and the nationalities question.

It is a crime and a personal failing that Olson’s ethnohistorical dictionary of the Soviet Union is not online.

Additionally it’s telling how the policy immediately became reinforced through national histories projects.

Fol’s (unpublished!) 2 volume French language history of the Finnish revolution and civil war.

AF Upton’s single volume on the Finnish Revolution is just as impressive and online.

Additional rare or German language books on Lithuania and of course, The Latvian Question.

The Caucasus in the Civil War.

Unsurprisingly, the largest American diaspora has the most written about it from its many high status survivors, especially in California.

Hovannisian’s four volume work on the Armenian Repubic and it’s downfall is a fantastic regional history.

Central Asia and the revolution with particular attention given to Kiva, Bukhara, and nationalism in Turkestan

Carrere d'Encausse (who is Georgian) has two excellent monographs on the chaos in Central Asia and it’s course.

Polish-Soviet War Part 1: the primary documents and indexes.

Of particular interest are Piłsudski’s actual memoirs and a lecture preserved by one of Tukhachevsky’s students and ultimately translated and published by the Pilsudsky Institute in London.

What a cruel irony.

Polish-Soviet War Part 2: studies

Davis’ book comes highly recommended by Smele, but there are many others I had not heard of.

The American Volunteers from decommissioned WW1 or Russian intervention units.

And the Poles at Paris who negotiated for the irredentist borders.

Polish Soviet War Part 3: more Studies

Some biographies on some less internationally remembered figures of Polish independence and the war against the Soviets.

A bio of Paderewski, the foreign minister who secured Wilsonian support and diaspora volunteers from America.

@espressosoldo @awslist

Ukraine in the Revolution

There was a lot of Ukrainian Studies and commentary in English, all of it available almost no where except pockets of diaspora around universities and Toronto-NE-Chicago-Pittsburgh.

It seems like the whole Rada started writing history in exile.

Ukraine in the revolution and civil war, between nationalism(s), the Rada, the Germans, the Entente, Soviets, whites, blacks, and greens.

Definitely one of the most busy fronts in the war, it’s had extensive but ill popularized theaters of war.

The war resulted in the rightward turn of Ukrainian nationalism, especially in “freer” Lvov and Galicia where nationalism was more possible.

Interesting dislike of Pidhainy and Stachiw despite his appreciation of his West Ukraine volumes.

The only English book on the Ukrainian-German February Treaty.

An amazingly hidden two volume history of revolutionary Donbass important enough to link gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req…

And the now immortalized Mongolian Front in the Revolution and Civil War.

The Siberian Whites in Manchuria and the short lived Japanese puppeted Far Eastern Republic

Gutman’s translated memoir-history of the destruction of Nikolaevsk on the Amur is a classic that tells you how the emigres felt. They may have been even more furious than the Westerners

The Jews in the Russian Revolution:

Of particular interest:

Abramson on Jews in the Ukrainian Rada

Frankel’s book on the late Tsarist pale

Levin’s massive work.

Gitelman on the Evsektsiia, the powerful Jewish Bolshevik faction that wanted to end Jewish separate identity.

Three pages of Cossack histories and memoirs.

Krasnov is a masterful writer in this list his memoirs should be at least as popular as Quiet Flows the Don.

Also some material on the Tatars and Bashkirs, who Stalin as Secretary of Nationalities had to pacify.

Finally, a few books on the implosion of the Imperial Russo-German populations that began in the Revolution and Civil War and ended with 1945.

Followed with similar accounts of the severe persecution of the Church.

Zatko’s Polish Catholic monograph is heavily anti Ukrainian.

Fin

@BoomerChang @PyotrNemets @akrivoruk @xctlot @myth20c_adam @mirthismight @LatvianOrthodox @DaimLtd