The world changes slowly and then very fast. To people born before the mid ‘70’s the USSR and the Eastern block were geographical facts, borders as real as the Alps and the Rhine. Growing up in Europe no one considered, let alone expected communism to end. And then it did, over a period of weeks and then really overnight. This is the story told at the end of this excellent, engrossing history book. But to get there you have to read about the beginning, the middle and the later part of the appalling tragedy of communism. Among stand out moments the short paragraph on Lavrentia Beria, numerically a bit player in the maelstrom of deaths, who had his men arrest women who he would rape and then kill. As the text says “bones of the victims are still being found”. A sexual sadist serial killer running the security apparatus. But then there was Stalin. And before him Lenin. And before him Karl Marx whose poems (not discussed in the book, look them up) foretold it all
“I shall build my throne high overhead,
Cold, tremendous shall its summit be.
For its bulwark-- superstitious dread,
For its Marshall--blackest agony.”
A terrible history, so fast being forgotten. Read this book and talk about it to the young people in your life.
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About the author
A gripping journey through the rise of communism through its ignominious fall.
Michael Malice uses his characteristically sharp wit to shine a light on the dark history of communism and totalitarianism from its revolutionary beginnings to its gradual, then sudden, collapse. Told through extremely well sourced primary sources Malice puts a human face on horrors that all too often are reduced to statistics. The human lives lost through Stalin's purges, the Holodomor, the Soviet Death Camps in Siberia, the torture and murder by secret police across eastern Europe are all exposed for what they were; some of the most vile anti-human acts that have ever been perpetrated on people by their governments, their friends, and even their families. It shows how these totalitarian systems not only reduce people to a state of slavery it tears the very essence of what it means to be a human being from their bodies and often leaves entire societies as shriveled husks in a state of constant fear, paranoia, and violence. Yet as dour as that sounds all is not lost. This work also shows how inherently unstable these systems are. How the constant fear and paranoia is not just a state of nature for the people living in these systems but for the rulers as well. It shows how small acts of kindness, of defiance, of humanity chip away at these vile systems and then when enough people find courage in themselves these systems collapse. Sometimes with a bullet, sometimes with a vote, sometimes with one man simply refusing an order at the greatest risk to himself and his family. And that is why this book is a must read for all those who desire a world without tyrants. It shows you the darkest depths of the human condition but gives you proof that with enough brave souls willing to fight their way out of those depths there is always a path to liberty. There is always hope.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2025Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
This book is a history of the Soviet Union and the manifestations of its Communist ideology. Our author walks us through the rise and fall of the empire starting with Vladimir Lenin assuming power via the Bolshevik victory in the 1917 Russian civil war and ending with the Belovezha Accords of 1991 dissolving the Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev resigning as it’s President.
A history of the Soviet Union...and why communism doesn't work!
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2025
While the narrative of this book is messy (some chapters follow individuals, some follow ideas, some follow periods of history) it does a good job of providing information about the Soviet Union from a variety of perspectives. How did Americans and other Europeans view Russia and the Soviet Union throughout the 1900s? How were these perspectives shaped by the communication technology of the time? Why were some people duped while others were not, while still others felt compelled to turn the other cheek? These questions and many more are explored in the pages of this book.
The major point that Malice gets across in his writing is the destructive nature of Communism: it is an ideology built upon lies and secrecy. Centralization of control is synonymous with the centralization of information, which is how totalitarian regimes operate. It is democracy that thrives on the dissemination of information. In order to squash this dissemination of information and keep all things centralized, Stalin and his chief advisors founded the Stasi, the Soviet secret police in charge of spying on its citizens. At one point in East Germany, the Stasi employed 102,000 members to control a population of 17 million, a heavy-handed move when compared with the Italian Gestapo, who at its height had 40,000 officials watching a country of 80 million. This statistic goes to show that surveillance was universal and obedience strictly enforced.
The secret police went by different names at different times in the empire, but their destructive techniques remained the same: arrests without evidence, torture without cause, imprisonment without verdicts, and execution without mercy. They rounded up everybody: the elites, the intellectuals, the foreign-born, the soldiers returning from war in Europe, and, most importantly, anybody suspected of political crimes against the regime. Tens of millions perished, and what comes across in these pages is the true inhumanity. The starvation of the Ukrainian people is one particularly brutal example because there was no way to hide the evidence of food: if there was too much color in a peasant’s cheeks, the Soviet authorities would know they were hiding food and would beat them until it was handed over. While many horrors of the Gulag archipelago are revealed, this dark turn of human nature is most famously recorded by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his autobiographical books The Gulag Archipelago.
I was particularly amazed at the Soviet’s ability to deceive the rest of the world. During the Second World War, Stalin fought on the side of the Allies and was viewed by many in Britain and America as a good guy. Despite the Soviet’s victory over Hitler’s regime, their own regime back home was arguably worse. Hitler came to power and was defeated within a decade; the Soviet Union abused its citizens for over 70 years (with Stalin personally in charge for 30 of them). Perhaps the West’s inability to discern the truth was due to the technology of the time: back then, messages had to travel with a person or over a cable, something easily stopped or damaged, whereas these days satellites can bounce giant quantities of information across the globe in seconds.
Having a monopoly on the media and information is what gave the regime its power and legitimacy in the eyes of the world and also how the cracks began to form as the truth eventually got out. (This is also how Nelson Mandela was eventually released from prison in South Africa—international news media broadcasting his story to the world and the world responding with pressure on the South African government.) Malice titles his book The White Pill, because ultimately this book is a message of hope and optimism. The people of the Soviet Union persevered against the greatest of odds, and while many lost their lives in tragic ways, eventually the system collapsed upon itself. Lies can only fester in the shade for so long before the antiseptic sunlight of truth reveals them. This is a pertinent message for us all to comprehend as we find ourselves in a world with totalitarian regimes on the rise again.
Images in this review
- Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2023Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Michael Malice uses his characteristically sharp wit to shine a light on the dark history of communism and totalitarianism from its revolutionary beginnings to its gradual, then sudden, collapse. Told through extremely well sourced primary sources Malice puts a human face on horrors that all too often are reduced to statistics.
A gripping journey through the rise of communism through its ignominious fall.
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2023
The human lives lost through Stalin's purges, the Holodomor, the Soviet Death Camps in Siberia, the torture and murder by secret police across eastern Europe are all exposed for what they were; some of the most vile anti-human acts that have ever been perpetrated on people by their governments, their friends, and even their families. It shows how these totalitarian systems not only reduce people to a state of slavery it tears the very essence of what it means to be a human being from their bodies and often leaves entire societies as shriveled husks in a state of constant fear, paranoia, and violence.
Yet as dour as that sounds all is not lost. This work also shows how inherently unstable these systems are. How the constant fear and paranoia is not just a state of nature for the people living in these systems but for the rulers as well. It shows how small acts of kindness, of defiance, of humanity chip away at these vile systems and then when enough people find courage in themselves these systems collapse.
Sometimes with a bullet, sometimes with a vote, sometimes with one man simply refusing an order at the greatest risk to himself and his family. And that is why this book is a must read for all those who desire a world without tyrants. It shows you the darkest depths of the human condition but gives you proof that with enough brave souls willing to fight their way out of those depths there is always a path to liberty. There is always hope.
Images in this review
Top reviews from other countries
- Itse KukinReviewed in Spain on November 5, 2023
Love the book, dislike the sending
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase - Manas PatilReviewed in India on April 17, 2024
Seminal work by Malice, a true lesson never taught.
Format: KindleVerified Purchase -
- t.de grootReviewed in Germany on May 16, 2025
A Brilliant Dive into Soviet History Through an Anarchist Lens
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
