Should I live tweet this historiography fight session?

Ok. Here we go!

Pipes' student up first.

Pipes likened historians to intelligence analysts. This is both true and hilarious.

Pipes felt you needed to understand culture intuitively and holistically....

Did not like social history at all...

Pipes felt impervious to criticism. Lots of self confidence.

Screw it. This is too hard.

Pipes didn't think the USSR was unreformable.

Softer than Malia. And speaking of... It's time for reflections on Malia.

Malia is a curious scholar. Rarely wrote in later years. Understanding the Russian Rev was an accident.

Malia contrasts with Prussia.

Improvisation as key to Soviet rule because there is no previous model. This is Kotkin's entire career and probably correct.

Malia's rejection of anticolonial revolution as useful model for understanding Russian revolution is probably wrong.

Malia could be understood as a Tocqueville reader. That's very apt.

But ironically rejected the idea of a civil society still surviving.

And now on the mighty Sheila Fitzpatrick.

Best part is she is here and seems very amused.

As a good SFP student, he is reading her work in her social context.

But also as a reaction to her radical father.

Neither left or right. A debunker rather than moralizer.

Central idea: people are mean in various social contexts.

Empirical training as heart of her work.

Influenced by Moscow Novy Mir circle. She was thus deeply transnational and thus unique in thinking. As such, had no easy allies.

Connected Stalinism to the revolution. This confused the anti Revisionists who wanted clear divisions. She wasn't easy to categorize due to a unique background.

Suny "let me start with my favorite target, I mean subject: Richard Pipes."

Points out Russia Under the Old Regime is almost Marxist.

Pipes best when talking about people he liked. Resorts to stereotypes and fixed nature when hostile. This makes him a conservative.

Suny points out the evolutionary and improvisation view is useful even if conservative and even close to the revisionist turn.

SFP sees the Soviet man as Ostab Bender. A survivor.

SFP not a Marxist but nobody is perfect.