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A review by franchenstein
War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century by Domenico Losurdo
5.0
I came to this book expecting to find some laughable, predictable and unashamed defense of Lenin, Stalin, the Soviet Union and all other communist revolutions of the 20th century. I wanted to give a chance to this side of the argument but I was expecting to be already against it.
Losurdo actually surprised me quite a lot. First of all, the focus seemed to be on deconstructing the myth of the communists regimes as unparalleled in the history of blood thirst and tyranny by contextualizing them, but never denying when they committed massacres or their poor management created famines. But it shows how some revisionist historians are either naive or in bad faith to relate these catastrophes with the Nazi and the holocaust, for example.
First, by showing that Nazi-Fascism was quite inspired by imperialism and colonialism, looking up to the British Empire or taking inspiration from the American expansion to the West for Germany to expand into the East.
He shows the Western tradition of genocides with colonial or enslaved populations, concentration camps, dehumanization from a racial perspective and shows the darkest passages from thinkers like Burke, Nolte and Fergusson.
The writer also shows how some accusations of man-made famines laid on the shoulders of the USSR are questionable or happened in similar circumstances to Colonial India, while Churchill doesn't get the same bad reputation as Stalin. Or how the famines in China were endemic and the one that happened during Mao's government was partly aggravated because of his poor management, but the blame should also be shared with American sabotage. And even with that, those countries managed, for a high price, to end these recurrent tragedies.
By contextualizing both the failures of the Western Liberal tradition and the Revolutionary regimes we get a sense that history is not so black and white and although it doesn't even try to convince the reader to be an unapologetic Stalinist as I first expected, it at least makes you rethink what you know about all the currently debated ideologies.
It's a thorough, well researched and impressive read while keeping it simple and enjoyable to read.
Losurdo actually surprised me quite a lot. First of all, the focus seemed to be on deconstructing the myth of the communists regimes as unparalleled in the history of blood thirst and tyranny by contextualizing them, but never denying when they committed massacres or their poor management created famines. But it shows how some revisionist historians are either naive or in bad faith to relate these catastrophes with the Nazi and the holocaust, for example.
First, by showing that Nazi-Fascism was quite inspired by imperialism and colonialism, looking up to the British Empire or taking inspiration from the American expansion to the West for Germany to expand into the East.
He shows the Western tradition of genocides with colonial or enslaved populations, concentration camps, dehumanization from a racial perspective and shows the darkest passages from thinkers like Burke, Nolte and Fergusson.
The writer also shows how some accusations of man-made famines laid on the shoulders of the USSR are questionable or happened in similar circumstances to Colonial India, while Churchill doesn't get the same bad reputation as Stalin. Or how the famines in China were endemic and the one that happened during Mao's government was partly aggravated because of his poor management, but the blame should also be shared with American sabotage. And even with that, those countries managed, for a high price, to end these recurrent tragedies.
By contextualizing both the failures of the Western Liberal tradition and the Revolutionary regimes we get a sense that history is not so black and white and although it doesn't even try to convince the reader to be an unapologetic Stalinist as I first expected, it at least makes you rethink what you know about all the currently debated ideologies.
It's a thorough, well researched and impressive read while keeping it simple and enjoyable to read.