What are /r/RevolutionsPodcast's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

This is likely doable, you can get get a USB CD Writer fairly cheaply. I've still got MediaMonkey and will use it for podcasts since I'm stuck in my old ways. Just as a thought experiment I gave it a shot. You should be able to burn to an MP3 Format, or straight audio.

https://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Portable-Rewriter-GP60NB50/dp/B00C2AMK2M

It is not the book he suggested, but I really like "Ottoman Centuries" for a super detailed flow of what was going on within the empire from its beginnings until its end.

https://smile.amazon.com/Ottoman-Centuries-Lord-Kinross/dp/0688080936

Link to the book mentioned in this episode, A Show Trial Under Lenin: The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Moscow 1922:

https://smile.amazon.com/Show-Trial-Under-Lenin-Revolutionaries/dp/9024726980

>kaiser_willem

I know a Chinese scholar Gao Hua has done some great work researching the early history of the communist party, and specifically the political movement that saw Mao Zedong become its undisputed leader.

if you have access to Audible, the BBC Radio series Russia: The Wild East is nice and comprehensive; covers both the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire beforehand.

In all honesty, there are few podcasts about the Cold War that are as comprehensive as Cam and Ray's A Cold War Podcast Fair warning, though. They are NOT everyone's cup of tea. Very NSFW. And it is a subscription podcast (the latest episodes you need to pay for). That being said, they are VERY thorough. Four or five episodes on the Yalta conference alone. More critical of the US than Americans might be used to. Like I said, not to everyone's liking but entertaining and informative nonetheless.

Are those the ones read by Mark Steinberg? Where he talks about the Tsars as embodying the "most peaceful" or the "formidable" attitudes?

I listened to them a while ago - and thought they were pretty good (at least compared to all the other treatments Russian history gets in the West). They probably suffer from a lack of narrative history, Mike-Duncan-style storytelling, and thus aren't very fun - you don't get characters to root for, you don't get emphasis on flashy and dramatic events. They are probably overly focused on the academic - lots of grand concepts, cultural history, relatively boring old intellectuals arguing about questions that no longer seem relevant... Steinberg's approach feels a bit neutral and clinical. But the alternative would be to do a Western-centric history (how the West sees it), a Russian nationalist history (how Russia saw/sees itself), or a Marxist history (how the Leninists or other Marxist saw it), and those are all highly political and distorted.

What did you find disappointing?

>Didn't he literally proclaim himself a god?

No, he did not. Not even close. In fact, he was trying to do the opposite of that.

I mean, at the time, France was experiencing intense conflict between atheists and Catholics, so Robespierre was basically trying to unite both sides in the middle by creating a new civic religion that both recognized the existence of god, the "supreme being," and moved away from the regressive aspects of Catholicism by embracing logic and enlightenment values. And as it turned out, people did not hate the "Cult of the Supreme Being". It was one of Robespierre's less controversial ideas.

I would urge you to read other sources on Robespierre to get a better idea of his life and personality. He was a fascinating man. His mother died when he was a child, and his father became depressed and squandered the family's money afterward. Robespierre was raised by his grandparents in a brewery, worked hard to become educated as a lawyer in Paris, then moved home to practice law in his much smaller hometown. He displayed no greed or avarice, had no sex scandals, no bribery scandals, nothing. He really was one of the only "incorruptible" people in France at the time of the revolution.

I would recommend Marisa Lindon's Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship and Authenticity in the French Revolution (2013). It's a fantastic book looking at the details of the Jacobin political terror. I loved how it explained in detail how these men who all attended Desmoulins' marriage (him, Robespierre, Brissot) ended up writing screeds against each other and getting each other killed. Robespierre was anything but bloodthirsty for 99% of his life. He was against the death penalty! How he became known for terror is a complex story of contingent historical events.

https://amazon.com/Choosing-Terror-Friendship-Authenticity-Revolution/dp/0198733097?sa-no-redirect=1

I enjoyed this very wonky take on the economic factors in the collapse: https://www.amazon.com/Struggle-Save-Soviet-Economy-Gorbachev/dp/1469630176/ref=nodl\_

​

More similar to the financial crisis that spurred the French Revolution than you might expect.

I'm seeing it for 18 bucks on Amazon, so maybe your Amazon is just trying to scam you?

I was about to say that between my two copies and the 5-6 I gave to friends and family, I might have some investments to cash in on...

https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Before-Beginning-Roman-Republic/dp/1610397215