Russia spends millions on propaganda to hide its crimes. These books expose the truth of Russian atrocities—read them, share them, and help uncover history Russia wants erased.

by UNITED24Media

10 comments

  1. Not sure if I can read all of them but I am going to order at least two.

  2. I’ve read some of these and overall this is a great rec list, though it is sorely lacking in works by Timothy Snyder. But I do like the centering of Ukrainian voices!

  3. I have Our enemies will vanish on my bookshelf.
    I read the first few chapters and it was excellent, really excited to jump back into this, would recommend.

  4. I have read blood lands. A harrowing read. I have a few of Plokhys books waiting to be read as well.

  5. Also try “Nothing is True And Everything is Possible” by Peter Pomerantsev.

  7. Strongly recommend both of Plokhy’s books, I don’t have any Ukrainian ancestry but became very interested in the culture over the past 5 years and he provides excellent context and insight 

  8. Just finished Red Famine. It took me two tries, but Holy hell. I can’t imagine any reasonable person reading a single page of that book and still think ‘maybe we should give communism a try’.

    Brutal stuff.

  9. If you can numb yourself to the degree to which the Russians have repeatedly invested in lies to build their national history since their founding in 1547 to cover up their inferiority complex relative to non-Russians (not just Ukrainians), look up Plokhiy’s “**Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation**”.

    A big insight that I got from that book is that the primitiveness and sheer malevolence of modern Russian nationalism is partially traceable to the efforts of Ukrainian intellectuals working for the Romanovs who were effectively forced to dumb-down or reinterpret ideals of the Age of the Enlightenment to suit the Russians’ tastes.

    —

    A book that’s not on the OP’s list but which I cannot but recommend with a megahorn is

    # Jade McGlynn’s “Russia’s War”.

    **In my view, it’s so important for the target readership in the West that I’ve increased the font.**

    McGlynn vaporizes the feel-good myth of ordinary Russians being innocent victims of Putin’s War™. It was a thoroughly satisfying read for me since she not only left me nodding darkly in agreement so often (based on my growing understanding of the experiences of Ukrainians and other victims of Russian aggression and colonialism), but she also refined my regard for ordinary Russians as a whole which has been progressively hardening over the last 3 years.

    Her observations about militant patriotism and benign patriotism among Russians has stuck with me because it especially helped me connect how so many ordinary Russians in this century regardless of education level or degree of self-declared “Westernization” can still so readily link their very self-awareness as Russians to the potential extermination of any non-Russian. I’ve bolded the quoted section to make this clear.

    >*Plenty of Russians do not question their country when it comes to performing patriotism. In discussions of patriotism, it makes sense to distinguish between two core types: one form of patriotism is benign, denoting pride in one’s country, another is more hostile – about blind support and hostile aggression.* ***Russians are unexceptional in terms of benign patriotism, but real outliers in terms of the number expressing ‘blind and militant’ patriotism, namely the belief you should support your country even if it is wrong and that your country should follow its own interest even if it harms others.*** *As one Russian friend, who has long left the country put it: ‘It is a terrible reflex: it’s my country and my duty is to defend it even if it is wrong. I must defend my country. You cannot imagine how deep and powerful this reflex is. Even those who don’t think this war is a good idea – say “we are wrong but we cannot lose”. Do you remember the post of [name redacted] that I sent you? It is my country and I wish it to win. Why can Americans commit war crimes and stay without any sanctions but we cannot? And this kind of stuff …’* ***Russians have scored higher than any other country polled on the measure of ‘blind and militant’ patriotism since the 1990s, showing that Putin articulated, or even responded, to Russian aggression rather than creating it****.*

    Again, I encourage any Westerner who’s genuinely interested in reconciling how a nominally Christian and accidentally European “nation” can so blatantly choose to be the baddies in all-caps in the 21st century to read McGlynn’s book.

  10. I’ll have to read Red Famine sometime. Tankies get super butthurt when you bring up that book

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