I have just noticed that 🤍 Internet Archive🤍 has uploaded two classic works on #Marxism and #USSR that were previously of little availability.
Leszek Kołakowski, “Main Currents of Marxism” (1976) is an encyclopedia of Marxism in three volumes (the English edition joins them in a single book). The first two discuss in great detail the history of socialist and communist movements, including Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism etc and TBH they are a bit too Biblical for me, but the third volume in the first place looks at their practical outcome and intellectual decay. If you were ever wondering whether the Soviet system was an anomaly or a correct derivative of Marxism-Leninism, Kołakowski discusses that in great detail.https://archive.org/details/maincurrentsofma0000koak
Pawel H. Dembinsky “The logic of the planned economy : the seeds of the collapse” (1991) is an evidence-based analysis of the Soviet economy from both economical and ideological point of view. If you are interested in the practical peculiarities of the Soviet economy and how it was built on top of ideology, this is the book to start (and it’s not too long). https://archive.org/details/logicofplannedec0000demb/mode/1up
If you are socialist, anarchist or generally left-leaning person, you should be reading these books in the first place. These are not #socialism bashing rants in any way: quite the opposite, these books offer a clear distinction between social-democratic movements which made the EU what it is today, and the socialist-revolutionary ones which made USSR what it was, and what #Russia is today. Most importantly, they precisely explain how each of these happened and offer a practical guidance on where to draw a clear moral border to avoid finding yourself in the place where Stalinists ultimately found themselves murdering millions of people because “you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs”.
After reading tons of Marxist literature, I can testify these books have one huge advantage over many Western publications: they were written by people who saw Soviet Marxism-Leninism in real-life. Where many Western writers had read Soviet Constitution and took it at face value, these guys saw it in action, thus sparing you embarrassingly naive statements such as “but it guaranteed freedom of speech!” or “but at least they gave away apartments for free!”.
No, any guarantee written on paper is worthless if you are prohibited from leaving not only your country but even your own village and are practically property of the state, which is the nuance that usually escaped the attention of well-fed socialist philosophers in Great Britain, France or USA.