To be more specific, I’m looking for unbiased biographies of Mao, Lenin, and Stalin. By “unbiased”, I mean not clearly riddled in western propaganda or authors who are apologists. Also, it would help if you can tell me where I can download them as ebooks.
The only thing I found for Mao was Mao: The Unknown Story by Chang, and the Private life of Chairman Mao by Zhisui. Both are full of blatant hatred and Western propaganda of Mao, so they are full of shit. I can’t find anything else in english though, there’s a chinese one but it’s sponsored by the CPC and is too long, so again it isn’t reliable. For Stalin, It’s like everything about that man is Western Propaganda, I can’t find any unbiased source. I know Stalin isn’t some saint and killed lots of people, but it’s like Westerners believe that’s all he did even in his free time! I saw one book say he killed 1 million soviet citizens per year, wtf! There is zero acknowledgments at all to the successes from his rule. The closest I found was from a former Soviet Historian using released Soviet Archives. Apparently he did one on Lenin too, and seems unbiased enough. For Lenin it’s the same problems w/ propaganda. Albeit, I can rely on his own texts as well to get a view on him.
I wouldn’t expect un biased as this is impossible. I’d rather look for nuanced takes who say that they did something bad, but examine why they did it and if it was necessary.
And you must always be critical of what anyone says and thinks even yourself. It’s ruthless criticism of all that exists after all.
As to spesific sources I don’t have any that are available as E-books. I mostly have local pamphlets and papir books printet by my or other communist groups or partyes
Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend.
Red Star over China. This one isn’t ‘about’ Mao, so much as the early days of the Chinese Revolution. Snow was a US journalist who gives a fair enough re-telling of the story.
Fanshen would also be a good one in that vein. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanshen
Oh, thanks for this!