"History of the USA since World War I" (1976 Soviet work, PDF)

[Ismail]

https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheUSASinceWorldWarI

Always nice to scan stuff on US history.

[RedKobra]

Thanks again Ismail.

[Invader Zim]

Read the first chapter, it appears to be written by an individual who doesn't know anything about Woodrow Wilson.

[Ismail]

Read the first chapter, it appears to be written by an individual who doesn't know anything about Woodrow Wilson.Any specific examples?

Considering how brief the mention of the Wilson Presidency is in the book, one might as well cite the 1970s Great Soviet Encyclopedia article on him:

Wilson, Thomas Woodrow

Born Dec. 28, 1856, in Staunton, Va., died Feb. 3, 1924, in Washington, D.C. Statesman of the USA.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, Wilson graduated from Princeton University in 1879. He received the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1886. From 1890 to 1902 he was a professor of law and from 1902 to 1910, the president of Princeton University. Wilson was governor of New Jersey during 1910-12. A member of the Democratic Party, he was president of the USA from 1912 to 1921. During the first years of his presidency he implemented laws that won him fame in bourgeois circles as a progressive reformer. Among them were the law on tariffs and the income tax (1913), the Federal Reserve Act (1913), and the Clayton Antitrust Law (1914), as well as the Adamson eight-hour working day law for railroads (1916), the La Follette-Simmons law regulating seamen’s labor, and other laws containing certain concessions to workers. However, his domestic policy as a whole helped strengthen the position of monopoly capital in the USA. Criticizing Wilson’s social demagoguery, Lenin pointed out that the “roots” of his policies “lay in sanctimonious piffle, petit bourgeois phrase-mongering, and an utter inability to understand the class struggle” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 41, p. 224).

In foreign policy Wilson supported expansion in the Far East and Latin America in the interests of the monopolies (for example, the interventions of 1914 and 1916-17 in Mexico and the occupation of Haiti in 1915 and Santo Domingo in 1916). On Apr. 6, 1917, Wilson’s government declared war on Germany, with the intention of taking an active part in a new partition of the world. After the overthrow of the Russian Autocracy in 1917, Wilson sent a special mission to Russia, attempting to keep it from leaving the war and to subordinate its economy to the interests of the USA. After the establishment of Soviet power in Russia, Wilson’s government gave extensive support to the White Guards. In 1918 it carried out landings of American forces in the northern and far eastern parts of Russia, thus embarking on the path of direct anti-Soviet intervention. In January 1918, Wilson proposed a hypocritical peace program—the so-called Fourteen Points, which aimed at consolidating American domination in international affairs. The results of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20, however, were unfavorable for Wilson: Great Britain and France retained for themselves the leading role in world politics, particularly in European affairs. The United States refused to ratify the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. After the conclusion of his presidency (1921), Wilson withdrew from political activity.

[The Disillusionist]

Who cares what the Soviets thought about American history? They weren't gonna be any more unbiased than the American history-writers were. :rolleyes:

[Ismail]

Who cares what the Soviets thought about American history? They weren't gonna be any more unbiased than the American history-writers were. :rolleyes:Personally I think a 500-page book about American history from a Soviet revisionist perspective is fairly interesting because:

A. At this point in time they were at least nominally Marxist in their analyses;
B. It can provide a different perspective;
C. It reflects the state of Soviet historiography at the time;
D. It allows one to see how the USSR assessed American-Soviet relations under various Presidents in retrospect.

The issue isn't about being "biased" or not. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States is said to be biased in favor of the oppressed, yet his book has flaws not because it's "biased," but because of its lack of historical materialism. Marx and Engels were clearly "biased" in favor of the working-class in their historical writings, yet it is precisely due to their application of historical materialism that they produced objective works.

I didn't scan this to go "hey guys here's a REAL history of the USA" (especially since at this point capitalism had been restored in the USSR and it was ruled by a dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie, which denounced the supposedly "dogmatic" coverage of American history during the Stalin period), I scanned it because I know there are people who would find it useful.

[Rafiq]

Who cares what the Soviets thought about American history? They weren't gonna be any more unbiased than the American history-writers were. :rolleyes:

This presumes that subjectivity alone is incapable of articulating the "real truth". The notion being presented here of an "unbiased" truthful account is the real biased obstruction to real truth.

Truth is - by definition one sided. As unfamiliar as I am with the book being presented, claiming that it is biased is not grounds for criticism. Capitalism, whose strength literally stems from a lack of consciousness of it of course will be met with "bias". Because again, mere recognition of social forces alone means taking a side. During the age of reason, the various sophistications in political science, and in science in general were certainly 'biased' and in favor of the political bourgeoisie. This however did not mean there was an objective middle ground free from subjectivity that could have been articulated. One had to take a side.

No one denies that the world exists independently of our thoughts, but that the means to even recognize this objective world is already a step into the domain of subjectivity. We are incapable of "completely" understanding things objectively because we are infinitely bound by a relationship with nature that entails discovery in approximation to our interaction with it. Soviet accounts may be biased, it might emphasize information and discount others, but that in no way makes it "just as wrong" as for example American accounts. The only traceable elements of bias that can be found in Warsaw pact countries, I have found is a lack of coherency in evaluating their own societies. The accounts of the societies of liberal-democracies are largely accurate, while the accounts of Communist societies by bourgeois-ideologues are largely inaccurate. That does not designate the means by which their own societies (i.e. Communist societies) were understood were accurate.

You cannot divorce the observer from the observed. You cannot step out of domains of struggle and conflict as a neutral observer. Reason, science - after all are mere tools of our social being (which again sais nothing about whether they are wrong or not).

[Invader Zim]

Any specific examples?


Everything it says about the 14 points.

[The Disillusionist]

Personally I think a 500-page book about American history from a Soviet revisionist perspective is fairly interesting because:

A. At this point in time they were at least nominally Marxist in their analyses;
B. It can provide a different perspective;
C. It reflects the state of Soviet historiography at the time;
D. It allows one to see how the USSR assessed American-Soviet relations under various Presidents in retrospect.

The issue isn't about being "biased" or not. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States is said to be biased in favor of the oppressed, yet his book has flaws not because it's "biased," but because of its lack of historical materialism. Marx and Engels were clearly "biased" in favor of the working-class in their historical writings, yet it is precisely due to their application of historical materialism that they produced objective works.

I didn't scan this to go "hey guys here's a REAL history of the USA" (especially since at this point capitalism had been restored in the USSR and it was ruled by a dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie, which denounced the supposedly "dogmatic" coverage of American history during the Stalin period), I scanned it because I know there are people who would find it useful.


This presumes that subjectivity alone is incapable of articulating the "real truth". The notion being presented here of an "unbiased" truthful account is the real biased obstruction to real truth.

Truth is - by definition one sided. As unfamiliar as I am with the book being presented, claiming that it is biased is not grounds for criticism. Capitalism, whose strength literally stems from a lack of consciousness of it of course will be met with "bias". Because again, mere recognition of social forces alone means taking a side. During the age of reason, the various sophistications in political science, and in science in general were certainly 'biased' and in favor of the political bourgeoisie. This however did not mean there was an objective middle ground free from subjectivity that could have been articulated. One had to take a side.

No one denies that the world exists independently of our thoughts, but that the means to even recognize this objective world is already a step into the domain of subjectivity. We are incapable of "completely" understanding things objectively because we are infinitely bound by a relationship with nature that entails discovery in approximation to our interaction with it. Soviet accounts may be biased, it might emphasize information and discount others, but that in no way makes it "just as wrong" as for example American accounts. The only traceable elements of bias that can be found in Warsaw pact countries, I have found is a lack of coherency in evaluating their own societies. The accounts of the societies of liberal-democracies are largely accurate, while the accounts of Communist societies by bourgeois-ideologues are largely inaccurate. That does not designate the means by which their own societies (i.e. Communist societies) were understood were accurate.

You cannot divorce the observer from the observed. You cannot step out of domains of struggle and conflict as a neutral observer. Reason, science - after all are mere tools of our social being (which again sais nothing about whether they are wrong or not).


Alright, these are definitely fair points, though Rafiq got a little too post-modernisty for my taste. With those points in mind, I can definitely see the relevance of being interested in this type of reading. When I first saw this thread, my first thought was of some of the members I've seen on this board who have a tendency to, for example, treat North Korean propaganda about the US as somehow more accurate than US news, because it's from an opposing perspective.

[Invader Zim]

This presumes that subjectivity alone is incapable of articulating the "real truth". The notion being presented here of an "unbiased" truthful account is the real biased obstruction to real truth.

Truth is - by definition one sided. As unfamiliar as I am with the book being presented, claiming that it is biased is not grounds for criticism. Capitalism, whose strength literally stems from a lack of consciousness of it of course will be met with "bias". Because again, mere recognition of social forces alone means taking a side. During the age of reason, the various sophistications in political science, and in science in general were certainly 'biased' and in favor of the political bourgeoisie. This however did not mean there was an objective middle ground free from subjectivity that could have been articulated. One had to take a side.

No one denies that the world exists independently of our thoughts, but that the means to even recognize this objective world is already a step into the domain of subjectivity. We are incapable of "completely" understanding things objectively because we are infinitely bound by a relationship with nature that entails discovery in approximation to our interaction with it. Soviet accounts may be biased, it might emphasize information and discount others, but that in no way makes it "just as wrong" as for example American accounts. The only traceable elements of bias that can be found in Warsaw pact countries, I have found is a lack of coherency in evaluating their own societies. The accounts of the societies of liberal-democracies are largely accurate, while the accounts of Communist societies by bourgeois-ideologues are largely inaccurate. That does not designate the means by which their own societies (i.e. Communist societies) were understood were accurate.

You cannot divorce the observer from the observed. You cannot step out of domains of struggle and conflict as a neutral observer. Reason, science - after all are mere tools of our social being (which again sais nothing about whether they are wrong or not).


You're right that 'bias' is a foolish charge to level at a work of history, as if subjectivity is actually achievable, integeral to the writing of history or necessarily even desirable. But the problem with this is that there is no discernable evidence of any historical scholarship having taken place.