I have a question for all of you.
Growing up it and going to the bookstores it seemed you would see all kinds of books about Germany under the Nazis, the Nazi Party, stuff on Hitler, World War Two, ect. However, you would scarcely find anything on the Soviet Union. Why is that?
The Nazis were superb propagandists, and were an unambiguous enemy - their story was also the story of our great victory over evil. So both sides had a lot to say about them.
The Soviets had the bad taste to be simultaneously vile, and
on our side. Worse, they did the actual hard work of defeating the Nazis, stealing the thunder from our heroic tale about how we won the war. And then they immediately became our Cold War enemy - and deliberately concealed from us everything they could about themselves. The Cold War was a disinformation war, and not publicising the enemy (and particularly not publicising their genuinely heroic feats in the war we wanted to pretend to have won without their help) was a major weapon in that war.
As the vanquished foe, the Nazis had no choice but to open up their archives (at least that fraction that hadn't been destroyed), and of course western journalists and servicemen had access to the physical evidence of everything they had done, from death camps and slave labour factories to secret weapons programs and military research establishments.
As allies, and then as subsequent (unbeaten) adversaries, the Soviets never had to provide such details of their regime, its facilities, crimes, or achievements.
Journalists are no less lazy than anyone - given the option of writing a dozen books based on copious source material and about a well known and popular topic, or having to do original research into a secretive regime to write just one book (about a subject fewer readers had any prior knowledge about) which would you choose?
