The fact that people could be so evil, its such a foreign concept to me I guess, like I knew there were serial killers and sadistic torturers out there, but just learning about the history of the soviet union, how they put so much effort into making things look fine, when they’re actually not. Its one thing to affect an individual’s life with an act, but to infuse that view on the entire world, doesn’t that narcissism and self-deception, even with good intentions, not shake your soul to the very core?
What is remarkable is the actual availability of a book, or many books, on Lenin and Stalin. And Mao.
The dilemma is, that these are typically framed as the problem was “communism”.
Pretty clearly, the problem was , among other antecedents, Napoleon [ whose hat still sells for millions of Euros], Bismark [ who is probably still getting towns and boats named after him ], and Marx and Engels.
The best place to start, as always, for an existential problem, is with the Old Testament. Specifically Genesis and Exodus.
One can always argue that they are myth, not history - the same can also be said for *The Peloponesian War, The Iliad,
The Trojan Women
Andromache.*
However, there is a kernel of history there, at least in that Tacitus and Josephus re framed real history with a great deal of seeming reliability.
But start with Flavius Josephus and Tacitus. Then go to the history of the Hapsburgs. Then the Romanovs.