The Books of My Life: Red Flag Unfurled

If I was asked to recommend one book for the interested intellectual, the advanced interested undergraduate, and the interested graduate student on Russian and Soviet history it would be Ronald Suny’s Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians, and the Russian Revolution (London: Verso, 2017). Suny’s book does what far too few books do. On one level it explores the discourse, particularly the Western discourse and more specifically the American discourse, on Russian and Soviet history and puts it into its proper broader economic, political, and cultural contexts. On another level, it offers a theoretical approach to Russian and Soviet history and history in general that is analytic systematic, and critical rather than polemical and apologetic, as are so much post-1917 writing on Russian and Soviet history, as Suny notes. On still another level it explores the history of Russia from the late Tsarist era to the Stalin era. Highly recommended.