#blackshirts and reds

[communistkenobi]

its so awesome when they just come right out and say it

[omegaversereloaded]

every american should have to read this book!!

[aspensmonster]

Devils in Amber: The Baltics by Phillip Bonosky (1992).

[ddarker-dreams]

Hi, do you have an updated masterlist? I am new here and I came from your Yandere Aventurine fic that is soo good! But I noticed that fic is not in your masterlist, so I am wondering if I missed any other HSR fics as well.

Thanks!

ANONNN i'm so sorry 😭 i haven't updated my masterlist in ages. however! i'm taking off work all of next week, so i'll have precious free time at long last 😌 i intend on fixing my masterlist up/doing as much writing as i can then! i've longed to be a hermit ever since my hermit privileges were rescinded. i'll be in my natural habitat shortly.

[khizuo]

best thing about marxist literature is how everyone loves tearing into people they think are wrong lol. the great tradition begun by marx himself

[sprites4ever]

Here's an Example as to why Donald Trump is fascist

Donald Trump wants Concealed Carry Reciprocity.

What is that?

In the United States, it is not automatically legal to carry a firearm in a concealed manner just because one has a firearms license. One needs to obtain a special additional permission to do so. Like most things in the United States, Concealed Carry is decided on a state-by-state basis, meaning a person's permission for Concealed Carry only applies in the state it in which it was issued.

Concealed Carry Reciprocity is the legal concept that a permission for Concealed Carry, issued in any state, applies in all states. So, if a gun owner was permitted to Concealed Carry in Oklahoma, he can currently only do so in Oklahoma. Doing it in any other state is a crime. Under Concealed Carry Reciprocity, it would not be.

What does Donald Trump intend with this?

Donald Trump knows that his most loyal followers live in deep red states, which also have the highest concentrations of gun owners. Due to the high concentrations and due to Republicans being generally against gun control, it is likelier that more gun owners in red states have Concealed Carry permission. Donald Trump wants to allow people to Concealed Carry in any state if they've received permission in one, because he knows that most people who will take advantage of this will be his most loyal followers.

Donald Trump plans to lay the groundwork for his version of Mussolini's Blackshirts and Hitler's Brownshirts, his own paramilitary force of loyal followers who are ready to attack and murder fellow citizens in open daylight for their political positions that oppose their idol. Concealed Carry Reciprocity makes it easier for them to do this.

This is fascism.

[neil-gaiman]

hi! i hope you’re having a good night! i was wondering what the significance of crowleys blue shirt and red tie in the 1941 flashbacks mean? they usually wear all black, so i was just wondering if it meant something :)

It meant that Crowley was not going to let anyone mistake him for a Blackshirt during WW2.

[stillnaomi]

U.S. policymakers argue that social revolutionary victory anywhere represents a diminution of freedom in the world. The assertion is false. The Chinese Revolution did not crush democracy; there was none to crush in that oppressively feudal regime. The Cuban Revolution did not destroy freedom; it destroyed a hateful U.S.-sponsored police state. The Algerian Revolution did not abolish national liberties; precious few existed under French colonialism. The Vietnamese revolutionaries did not abrogate individual rights; no such rights were available under the U.S.-supported puppet governments of Bao Dai, Diem, and Ky.

Of course, revolutions do limit the freedoms of the corporate propertied class and other privileged interests: the freedom to invest privately without regard to human and environmental costs, the freedom to live in obscene opulence while paying workers starvation wages, the freedom to treat the state as a private agency in the service of a privileged coterie, the freedom to employ child labor and child prostitutes, the freedom to treat women as chattel, and so on.

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti

[pissplasmicpantom]

while fascism easily produces justifications for colonialist & imperialist violence, & fascist states in history have engaged in such violence before, it is not the originator of colonialist or imperialist violence, nor is it the only ideology capable of justifying the deployment of colonialist or imperialist violence

if u wanna critique the usa for the violence its built upon, u need to acknowledge that that violence was wrought in the pursuit of life, liberty, and property; u also need to acknowledge the historical relationship between liberalism & fascism, where fascist groups run a final defense for the nation's capital against encroaching socialist movements (michael parenti's blackshirts & reds digs into this if u wanna learn more)

to call any state that has done massacres as simply "fascist" is to water down the utility of it as a meaningful descriptor of an ideology, & gives leeway to other ideologies that have had genocides & ethnic cleansing done under their banner; genocides & ethnic cleansing done throughout the world & for several centuries even, in the case of liberalism

[mesetacadre]

hi, i hope you dont mind me asking this question! i often come across lists of reading recommendations for communists, and they are usually focused entirely on communist theory. which is important and im already on that, but i wonder if you also have recs for learning about history? especially the history of the soviet union, but also other past and present socialist states. i sometimes find myself reading theory and understanding the concepts in a vacuum, but with very little understanding of the historical context they were written in, if that makes any sense. and id like to get a basic grasp of the history of various socialist projects that isnt just the typical western "the ussr was evil!!!!" thing

Hi, historical context is indeed very important for works of theory, especially if it's more than a hundred years old. Lenin's What is to be Done, for example, is very conditioned by its historical context of Russia still being predominantly feudal, with only a timid appearance of the proletariat in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and therefore the very first trade unions, which he talks about. The understanding of these texts is amplified, and quite often enabled by knowing at least the basic historical context. Below I'll list the historical works I've read (and others) with some commentary, but I encourage anyone who has something to add to do so, since I am as of only recently getting more into historiography.

Anything by Anna Louise Strong (I've read The Soviets Expected it (1941) and In North Korea (1941), there's also The New Lithuania (1941), The Stalin Era (1956) and When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet (1959) for example). Her works, which I'd consider primary sources since they are written from her own experience witnessing events and talking to a lot of people, are extremely useful if you wish to form an idea about how some aspects of socialist states worked. The limitation of her works also resides in this specificity and closeness, these are not works that present a broad view of long processes, but a slice of the present with the sufficient historical context. They are still very, very good.

The Open Veins of Latin America (Spanish versrion), by Eduardo Galeno (1971). This one is focused on the history of imperialism in Latin America, how it evolved from the moment the first Spanish foot touched ground to the time it was written in (It talks about Allende before he was assassinated but after achieving power, for example). Perhaps it's not exactly what you're looking for, but it contains very important general context for any social movement that has happened since 1492 to 1971

The Triumph of Evil, by Austin Murphy (2002). I have mixed feelings about this book. While it insists on this weird narrative of absolute evil, which IMO takes away a lot of value from the overall points made, it is an astonishingly in-depth analysis of the economic performance and general merit of socialist systems against their capitalist counterparts. Most of the book is dedicated to comparing the GDR to the FRG, and both the economic and social data it exposes was very eye-opening to me when I read it about 2 years ago. If you can wade through the moralism (especially the beginning of the introduction), it's a gem. I've posted pictures of its very detailed index under the cut :)

Blackshirts and Reds, Michael Parenti (1997). Despite the very real criticisms levied against this book, like its mischaracterization of China, it is still a landmark work. Synthetically, it exposes the relationship between fascism, capitalism and communism.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad (2019); The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World, Walter Rodney (2018). I'm lumping these two together (full disclosure, as of writing I'm about four fifths of the way through RSOtTW) because they deal with the same topic, Prashad being influenced by Rodney as well. Like both titles imply, they deal with the effects the October revolution had on the exploited peoples of the world, which is a perspective that's often lost. Through this, they (at least Prashad) also talk about the early USSR and how it functioned. For example, up until reading Red Star, I hadn't even heard of the 1920 Congress of The Toilers of the East in Baku, or the Congress of the Women of the East.

From here on I'll link works that I haven't (yet) read, but I have seen enough trusted people talk about them to include them

How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report, by Domenico Losurdo (2008). This one talks about how the period of Stalin was twisted and exaggerated through destalinization.

Devils in Amber, by Philips Bonoski (1992). This is about the Baltics and their historical trajectory from before WW1 to the destruction of the USSR (I'm not very sure on those two limits, perhaps they fluctuate a bit, but it definitely covers from WW1 to the 60s)

Socialism Betrayed, by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny (2004). This one deals with the process leading up to and the destruction of the USSR itself.

The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins (2020). This is about the methods the US used in the second half of the 20th century to stamp out, prevent, or otherwise sabotage communist movements and other democratic anti-imperialist movements.

I know some of these aren't specifically about socialist states, which is what you asked, but the history of its opposition is just as important to understand because it always exists as a condition to these countries' development and policies chosen.

[communistkenobi]

reading blackshirts and reds. 1) having a great time 2) I remember Toscano in Late Fascism gives a bunch of definitions of fascism and one of them was that fascism is bourgeois class consciousness. applying that label to fascism seems to be pretty productive while reading Parenti

[txttletale]

i realize that my last post might be a bit overwhelming and doesn't give a starting point, so here's a truncated version of the highlights in a vaguely recommended reading order:

friedrich engels, principles of commmunism

karl marx, wage labour & capital

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

rosa luxemburg, reform or revolution?

vincent bevins, the jakarta method

v.i. lenin, the state & revolution

v.i. lenin, what is to be done?

walter rodney, the russian revolution: a view from the third world

michael parenti, blackshirts and reds

v.i lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

eduardo galeano, the open veins of latin america

walter rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

frantz fanon, the wretched of the earth

kwame nkrumah, neocolonialism: the last stage of imperialism

zak cope, the wealth of (some) nations

karl marx, the german ideology

edward herman and noam chomsky, manufacturing consent

elaine scarry, the body in pain

michel foucault, discipline and punish

ed. stuart hall, representation: cultural representations and signifying pratices

christian fuchs, theorizing digital labour

[contemplatingoutlander]

Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind.

Robert Paxton thought the label was overused. But now he’s alarmed by what he sees in global politics — including Trumpism.

When the foremost historian on fascism, Robert Paxton, who has been reluctant in the past to apply that label to Trump, finally admits that Trump IS a fascist it's time to pay attention.

This is a gift🎁link so you can read the entire article. Below are some excerpts.

Jan. 6 proved to be a turning point. For an American historian of 20th-century Europe, it was hard not to see in the insurrection echoes of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, who marched on Rome in 1922 and took over the capital, or of the violent riot at the French Parliament in 1934 by veterans and far-right groups who sought to disrupt the swearing in of a new left-wing government. But the analogies were less important than what Paxton regarded as a transformation of Trumpism itself. “The turn to violence was so explicit and so overt and so intentional, that you had to change what you said about it,” Paxton told me. “It just seemed to me that a new language was necessary, because a new thing was happening.” When an editor at Newsweek reached out to Paxton, he decided to publicly declare a change of mind. In a column that appeared online on Jan. 11, 2021, Paxton wrote that the invasion of the Capitol “removes my objection to the fascist label.” Trump’s “open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line,” he went on. “The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary.” [...] This summer I asked Paxton if, nearly four years later, he stood by his pronouncement. Cautious but forthright, he told me that he doesn’t believe using the word is politically helpful in any way, but he confirmed the diagnosis. “It’s bubbling up from below in very worrisome ways, and that’s very much like the original fascisms,” Paxton said. “It’s the real thing. It really is.” [emphasis added]

Remember, fascism typically involves a cult of personality. Hitler was wildly popular with ordinary Germans.

It's no coincidence that Trump is so obsessed with the numbers at his rallies.

[lullabyes22-blog]

Snippet - Red Line - Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

Jinx narrates Ekko's life story.

Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

tw: death, police brutality, violence, sickness.

Snippet:

To make a short story long:

One night, many moons ago (twenty years to be precise), the Fissures were hit by what is known as Die Pest—not a mass extermination of rodents, but a deadly contagion known as the Ash Plague. It turned thousands of residents into hacking, howling, hole-riddled wraiths who had little choice but to be quarantined at great expense inside the Skylight Commercia's glass dome, under the Council's decree.

All access to the Bridge was restricted: Fissurefolk were barricaded from crossing over to Topside's salubrious climes, where well-heeled, well-met folks went about their business on the immaculately paved streets while a slow poison whittled down their sunless neighbors, leaving nothing behind but bones.

Two of the soon-to-be-damned were a couple with a young boy, barely a year old. They weren't wedded, this being the Fissures and nobody giving a rat's flea-bitten behind; the only ones in town who kept up the tradition were undertakers and tax collectors, both being in the business of last rites, though one was more lucrative than the other (and a damn sight more sanitary).

Point being: the couple were spared the penance but not the plague. Within weeks of its landfall in the Fissures, it spread through the community like wildfire. The woman died first; her man and baby boy both watched her heave her insides out until all she had left were tears and teeth, and not even a mouthful of either by the time she'd kicked the bucket.

It broke the man hard, her passing. She took everything but his breath.

Then the baby came down with the same fever, and threatened to leave him with nothing.

They say that when a person loses their heart, they have a bottomless hole in its stead. One that can be filled by whatever a heart can hold. This man didn't lose his heart; instead what died in him was cowardice, or maybe common sense.

So he fortified himself on zinfandel, swaddled the baby inside a cloth, and decided to do the impossible.

He slipped out of his family's hovel at sundown. Then he crept into the ginnel—that's a backalley, for the uninitiated—just beyond their stoop to check whether there was any blackshirts lurking. No one save for the Night Watch making their rounds, and he had two blocks on those blokes.

The man snatched up some ash, which was scattered across the streets in the remnants of that frosty Fissure evening. He rubbed it into his skin until his dark flesh held the same pallor as the ill.

Then down he went: as quietly as a rat stalking a scrap. He and his late lady-love were Tausendkünstlers. That's the local nickname for a jack-of-all-trades. In more esoteric circles, it has another meaning. The closest translation is "conjurer," but the wordplay is often lost on folks who don't have an ear for language.

Or a taste for magic.

This man and his partner had spent much of their lives defrauding people blind to the truth that, well, there ain't no such thing as magic. Only the odd miracle, and only if you've got enough coinage to make it happen. The rest's a matter of timing. Luck.

And for the truly savvy: trickery.

Which bought us to this fellow slinking through the shadows: dodging street lamps and dripping lines of laundry alike. To get out of quarantine, he'd need to conjure a few miracles.

And use up the rest of his luck.

So this man sprinted through the streets with his squalling babe against his chest, until he hit the jackpot. In a courtyard by the Black Lanes, there stood a vehicle.  It was a rudimentary motorcar, just the wheels and chassis really. The man had been fixing up the innards before his lady-love got sick.

Still, it was good enough to pass a cursory inspection at the Bridgeside, given the sheer volume of vehicles carting supplies upriver each day.

Our fellow had neither papers, nor permits. Not to mention a suspicious lack of supply boxes loaded into his trunk. He just had his hands on the wheel and something foreign banging around in his ribcage.

Maybe that was bravery? Or, as mentioned, magic?

Maybe it was love?

Whatever you call it, the man was in full grip of this feeling. He gunned the engine, and began a laborious ascent up the roughshod streets toward the Bridge. In the passenger seat, the baby wept in fitful bursts, while the man dabbed at his feverish little face with a cloth which, coincidentally, was all that remained of his lady-love's favourite dress.

That dress tells the story of how they met in three distinct panels:

The first panel: Him and a group of ruffians, headed by two epically hard-headed rascals known as Vander and Silco, taking a joyride in his motorcar—cobbled together from a hijacked Enforcer's paddywagon—when they knocked a woman off the sidewalk and ass-backwards into the muck.

They rush out in a panic—him the first to reach her—to find a charming pair of stockinged legs sticking out of a well-stitched woolen skirt, and an even longer seam of swear words flying out of a prettily-plump mouth.

The second panel: A slightly less raucous encounter, and the man apologizing profusely over a pint of ale to this fetching, foul-mouthed lady for his recklessness. Her face is a frigid moue; she's plainly not interested. At least, until they go outside and she sees him fiddling with the motorcar engine. A spark comes alive in her eyes: she's a tinkerer herself. But her passion lies in mechanized textiles—fashionable clothing made from "sensible cloth," a cotton-steel blend that's both stylish and stab-resistant.

She smiles. He chuckles.

Their eyes meet, and on this newfound common ground, a sweeter bargain is struck.

The last panel: they sit, side-by-side, in the musty dimness of Benzo's shop—in the backroom, where the real business is done without a single signature crossing the dotted line—working on a dress. It's got a special pattern of steel-meshed weave.  Stab-resistant, as mentioned prior. Also great at keeping shrapnel shards at bay. Better safe than sorry, especially now that she's running with Vander, Silco and his crazy lot, too.

Running with this man in particular, who wants only the best for her, even if that's not always possible to deliver. His love language isn't words; it's the hard work and honest sweat as he works with her on the dress, stitch after loving stitch, even though it leaves his fingertips sore.

It's worth it to see the way her tongue curls prettily between her teeth as she concentrates on aligning the seams. At the warmth of her arm, a smooth line against his own, and how he imagines the fabric unfurling between them, so he can see their shared future, sewn right in the steel flux: a chance encounter woven into courting danger and courting bliss in equal parts.

When the dress is finished, she throws her arms around him and laughs. His fingers ache, but his heart's fit to bursting.

Then she kisses him, and he thinks: 

 Boom.

Because a boom's always the best start to a love story.

That dress would take all kinds of hits during their days together—burns, bloodstains, the occasional stray bullet from fleeing the Enforcers storming Vander and Silco's underground rallies. Not the ideal lifestyle—nor a choice the man would've made.

But choice was slim pickings in the Undercity. And the past months had brought a lot less carousing, a lot more casing. Not too proud of it, but what else were they to do? There was no money in gadgetry. Not without a rich patron. The only means of true survival was smuggling, safe-cracking, and grand larceny on the wrong side of town.

Not to mention all the legups that came with having Vander and Silco's back, and knowing they had yours. 

The couple needed a legup. They needed someone in their corner.

See, they had a whelp on the way. A babe on a hip, soon enough. That'd keep any man's eye on the horizon.

In the passenger seat, the babe squalled. The man was catapulted back to the moment. Ash streaking his forehead, and his dead love's dress a crumpled heap in his fist.

The motorcar's creaky wheels rolled doggedly up the streets.

The man hoped to cross the Bridge before the curfew bell clanged. Hoped to trade the boy a worse fate for a better—the golden cage over the black pit. His plan—if it can be called that—was such: he'd get pulled over at the checkpoint. The guards would demand documentation. When they shone their lanterns at him, they'd see the grey grime smearing his cheeks. Instantly, they'd recoil, as Topsiders did at anything less than spotless.

In that moment, with them rearing away, he'd scoop the boy into his arms, snugly enfolded in his love's dress, and make a mad dash across the Bridge. 

All he had to do was cross the red line at the border. Once he did, he'd be under the jurisdiction of Piltover proper, rather than the Wardens. They could gun him down in broad daylight. But the child would be pronounced a ward of the state, which meant they'd place the little thing in an orphanage, where medicks would treat his sickness.

Where he might grow up healthy, happy and bright.

Where he might become someone, like his mother always wished.

The motorcar crept up the crumbling streets, skirting past piles of dead dogs, rats, cats—they'd all perished too. Flies swarmed in clouds over the mangled heaps of fur and flesh.

In the distance, the harbor glowed: a golden hand beckoning.

As the motorcar neared the Bridge's ramparts, the man spotted a squadron of Enforcers posted between two caravels across the road. The line to get past was long and winding. Each carriage took half an hour to inspect.

A long time. Too long!

By the time the man reached the front, the curfew bell would have rung.

Gods, all he needed was to cross that red line. To be given leave to enter the promised land. A small mercy, just a tiny scrap. Please. Why couldn't they give him that?

The man's eyes fixed on the checkpoint, jaw clenched so tight he felt his back teeth chip. The line crept forward one laborious inch at a time. Every bump in the road jostled his bones.

Halfway there, the curfew bell started clanging; the Enforcers lined up on the rampart, barring further entrance. All the vehicles waiting to cross were summarily turned away.

The man's stomach dropped to the car's floor, and then dropped through the floor, and straight down into the Pilt.

In the passenger seat, the baby wailed.

In a world of slim choices and shrinking odds, the man knew he had none left.

When you get only one chance in hell, what've you got to lose? Nothing—which is exactly what he had. He might be waylaid before he got halfway across, sure. A broadside could snaffle him at the wheel; his windows could shatter from a rifle stock bashing the glass in; a hail of lead could leave his guts spilled across the cobblestones.

His body, floating in the Pilt in the aftermath, a knife-edge moon in its reflection...

...but, if there was a chance his son might make it Topside?

He risked it.

Bracing a palm across the baby's chest, the man floored the gas pedal, screeching his way through the barricade like a hot blade through butter. He ploughed right through the middle of the blockade. Crates toppled. Enforcers scattered like loose coins. Shouts rang out, then a chorus of gunshots.

In the passenger seat, the baby let out a hiccupping cry.

 We're going to make it, the man thought. Just across the line.

Boom.

An explosion shook the Bridge, knocking the car sideways. Something massive, maybe a gatling gun—had blown out the car's tires. The wheels ruptured, sending the vehicle skidding off the pavement. It plunged, nose-down, into the vertiginous canyon below. Moments later, the gas line ruptured, sending an impressive fireball sky-high over the River.

Sparks rained down. Soot followed.

In the backdraft, the boy's scream rang out—clear, shrill, angry.

Alive.

By some miracle—or maybe old-fashioned Tausendküstler trickery—the man had snatched up the wee lad—snugly enfolded within his mother's dress—into his arms, and leapt from the careening car. They'd hit the cobblestones, rolling and rolling, as the car tipped off the Bridge.

They stopped—a hair shy of the demarcation. Right near the painted line separating the Undercity from Piltover.

The man ran.

One boot missing, his shirtsleeves shredded, his elbows and knees streaked with blood. And still, he held his son to his breast, and ran like hell.

 He kept running, even as the Enforcers greeted him with the traditional Topside salutation. Bullets ricocheting at his heels, ripping up stone, metal, meat, as he sprinted across the Bridge. As shouts rose, and sirens skirled, and a storm of brass buttons and spit-shined badges lunged in hot pursuit.

One bullet winged him across the temple. Blood sprayed.

Teeth gritted, he pushed hard. Twenty-five yards from home plate.

Twenty.

Fifteen.

Ten—!

Boom.

A third bullet went clean through his skull.

The man staggered, with less than half a yard to go. The baby squalling in his arms, his big brown eyes raised skyward to the golden city as the night and his father's life seeped away.

Finally, the man fell, tripping over blood-slick cobblestones.

He dropped to the ground inches from the red line, curling around the child in a final embrace, as the Enforcers advanced in jagged silhouettes, with rifles drawn and torches held high.

Which is where Benzo and Vander, in the vicinity after a supply run, found Ekko squalling in his dead father's arms.

Ekko would never cross the red line. Instead, he'd spend much of his early toddlerhood curled around the fraying dress, its bloodstains gone coppery-dark. The last relic of his parents, two Tausendküstler fools, taken in by the illusion of a golden elsewhere beyond the river, and the lie that is Topside's creed:

Progress.

As he grew up, Ekko's whole life would be spent in pursuit of something better. Something real. Something that he'd build right in the Fissures.

Because if a city could change, on the level, it must change together. Honesty, grit and guts would get you halfway there. But cleverness, greased gears and a fistful of audacity was what'd see you past the threshold.

Ekko was a Tausendküstler, too. But no fool. Even on the nights when his fingers ached, like his old man's once had, as he stitched together the threads for a brighter tomorrow.

 He just didn't know that a blue-haired girl, who'd lost her own family on the Bridge, would be the match to set the spark in motion. Two ends of a lit fuse. Different sides, same story. Same old fight: getting to the Promised Land, however many yesterdays it took.

Even if the Promised Land was their own doorstep.

But that story is still in progress. For now, there's only the boom.

And a pinch of magic called love to make up for the rest.

[ddarker-dreams]

☾ book recommendations: *✲⋆.

my all time favorites:

the brothers karamazov by fyodor dostoevsky

notes from underground by fyodor dostoevsky

the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde

frankenstein by mary shelly

the plague by albert camus

we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson

the seven who were hanged by leonid andreyev

blackshirts & reds by michael parenti

others that i'd recommend:

break the body, haunt the bones by micah dean hicks

tomie by junji ito

uzumaki by junji ito

berserk by kento miura

the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson

i have no mouth, and i must scream by harlan ellison

the tell-tale heart by edgar allen poe

the cask of amontillado by edgar allen poe

rebecca by daphne du maurier

wuthering heights by emily brontë

dune by frank herbert

a shadow over innsmouth by h. p. lovecraft

the color out of space by h. p. lovecraft

the dunwich horror by h. p. lovecraft

crime and punishment by fyodor dostoevsky

demons by fyodor dostoevsky

the idiot by fyodor dostoevsky

jane eyre by charlotte brontë

do androids dream of electric sheep? by philip k. dick

a long fatal love chase by louisa may alcott

the stranger by albert camus

the metamorphosis by franz kafka

the trial by franz kafka

dragonwyck by anya seton

discipline and punish by michel foucalt

the castle of otranto by horace walpole

faust by johann wolfgang von goethe

the fall by albert camus

the myth of sisyphus by albert camus

the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde by robert louis stevenson

blood meridian by cormac mccarthy (do look into the content warnings though, there's heavy violence/depictions of 1840s-1850s racism)

the death of ivan ilyich by leo tolstoy

the dead by james joyce

the overcoat by nikolai gogol

dead souls by nikolai gogol

hiroshima by john hersey

useful fictions: evolution, anxiety, and the origins of literature by michael austin

no exit by jean paule satre

candide by voltaire

white nights by fyodor dostoevsky

notes from a dead house by fyodor dostoevsky

the shock doctrine by naomi klein

the 100 year war on palestine by rashid khalidi

killing hope by william blum

the karamazov case: dostoevsky’s argument for his vision by terrence w. tilley

stiff: the curious life of human cadavers by mary roach

lazarus by leonid andreyev

imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism by vladmir lenin

the viy by nikolai gogol

[sparvverius]

"Not everyone romanticized capitalism. Many of the Soviet and Eastern European emigrés who had migrated to the United States during the 1970s and 1980s complained about this country's poor social services, crime, harsh work conditions, lack of communitarian spirit, vulgar electoral campaigns, inferior educational standards, and the astonishing ignorance that Americans had about history."

-Blackshirts & Reds, Michael Parenti (emphasis mine)

disappointed soviet expats: