Grover Furr is amazing at digging up crazy documents from Soviet archives, but he then extrapolates the content of those documents to a ridiculous degree. He's not a historian (he teaches Medieval English literature in New Jersey) and his work isn't taken very seriously by the historical community at large. I would take anything you read in his works with a heavy grain of salt.
The best source on Stalin, specifically dismantling a lot of the Western anti-communist myths about Stalin as an evil dictator, is Domenico Losurdo's Stalin: History and Criticism of A Black Legend. He's a well respected Italian Marxist scholar and he used a ton of primary sources to paint a flattering portrait of Stalin that isn't disconnected from reality and shows he was a flawed individual, like all of us. You can read it here, as it has never been officially published in English due to its controversial nature.
If you read between the lines Trotsky's Stalin is actually quite good, especially on Stalin's earlier years. Just take a lot of what he says about Stalin's "barbaric nature" and shit like that with heavy skepticism. Books by Ronald Grigor Suny and Moshe Lewin, both English-speaking Soviet historians, are generally very good.
In general if you see a writer compare the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany in any kind of systematic way, disregard their opinion entirely. Likewise if they talk about how the Soviet Union was "evil." If a historian is inserting broad sweeping moral judgements like that into a work of history about things that aren't even a century old you can be sure they have an axe to grind and are not going to give you a remotely accurate account of how things were.
That Losurdo book looks awesome, I'm definitely putting that on my reading list.
it has never been officially published in English due to its controversial nature
I myself am somewhat skeptical of Grover Furr, but he has a point that you simply cannot portray Stalin as anything other than a monster in Western historical study, it's simply not allowed. And this is great proof of his point. The thing is, Furr isn't the type of person who should be examining Stalin (and I think he would possibly agree with that), but no one else is doing it or there's roadblocks put in the way of people who might want to. He's right that if you try and deviate from this position on Stalin in the West at least, you get punished. And someone like Kotkin can write whatever he wants about Stalin and not get any pushback because no one even bothers to examine Stalin critically.
Oh for sure, I'm glad Furr exists and support his overarching goal of revisionist history in hegemonic Western academia. I love Losurdo's book because he starts with all these amazing quotes of figures who just years later would call Stalin "evil tyrannical maniac" all praising Stalin as a titan and a hero upon his death. Really covers how quickly and how totally the image of Stalin was dragged through the mud for propaganda's sake.
Yup there's an English translation out there that's been looking for a publisher for years. It's quite good, but they just released in online as a PDF because nobody wanted to publish it.
I was looking for comments I remembered that explain Furr really well and realized it was one of yours.
https://hexbear.net/post/110328/comment/1221996
OP check that out for a good example though also quite a few people here have given some nice critiques of Furr and the ever important fact that he is NOT a historian
I've gotten to the point that any approval I have for his translations has been wholly soured by just how rabid a lot of online MLs have been in citing him and his polemics as fullproof marxist histories.
So much so that now people have sorta fooled themselves into thinking Parenti is that way as well, which couldn't be further from the truth
Fair enough, he does get vastly over-memed over other serious historians. Parenti as well, while a wonderfully polemical writer, is not a historian and his works like Blackshirts and Reds could do with some editing and citations for his more out there claims.
Grover Furr is amazing at digging up crazy documents from Soviet archives, but he then extrapolates the content of those documents to a ridiculous degree. He's not a historian (he teaches Medieval English literature in New Jersey) and his work isn't taken very seriously by the historical community at large. I would take anything you read in his works with a heavy grain of salt.
The best source on Stalin, specifically dismantling a lot of the Western anti-communist myths about Stalin as an evil dictator, is Domenico Losurdo's Stalin: History and Criticism of A Black Legend. He's a well respected Italian Marxist scholar and he used a ton of primary sources to paint a flattering portrait of Stalin that isn't disconnected from reality and shows he was a flawed individual, like all of us. You can read it here, as it has never been officially published in English due to its controversial nature.
If you read between the lines Trotsky's Stalin is actually quite good, especially on Stalin's earlier years. Just take a lot of what he says about Stalin's "barbaric nature" and shit like that with heavy skepticism. Books by Ronald Grigor Suny and Moshe Lewin, both English-speaking Soviet historians, are generally very good.
In general if you see a writer compare the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany in any kind of systematic way, disregard their opinion entirely. Likewise if they talk about how the Soviet Union was "evil." If a historian is inserting broad sweeping moral judgements like that into a work of history about things that aren't even a century old you can be sure they have an axe to grind and are not going to give you a remotely accurate account of how things were.
That Losurdo book looks awesome, I'm definitely putting that on my reading list.
I myself am somewhat skeptical of Grover Furr, but he has a point that you simply cannot portray Stalin as anything other than a monster in Western historical study, it's simply not allowed. And this is great proof of his point. The thing is, Furr isn't the type of person who should be examining Stalin (and I think he would possibly agree with that), but no one else is doing it or there's roadblocks put in the way of people who might want to. He's right that if you try and deviate from this position on Stalin in the West at least, you get punished. And someone like Kotkin can write whatever he wants about Stalin and not get any pushback because no one even bothers to examine Stalin critically.
Oh for sure, I'm glad Furr exists and support his overarching goal of revisionist history in hegemonic Western academia. I love Losurdo's book because he starts with all these amazing quotes of figures who just years later would call Stalin "evil tyrannical maniac" all praising Stalin as a titan and a hero upon his death. Really covers how quickly and how totally the image of Stalin was dragged through the mud for propaganda's sake.
deleted by creator
Yup there's an English translation out there that's been looking for a publisher for years. It's quite good, but they just released in online as a PDF because nobody wanted to publish it.
I was looking for comments I remembered that explain Furr really well and realized it was one of yours. https://hexbear.net/post/110328/comment/1221996
OP check that out for a good example though also quite a few people here have given some nice critiques of Furr and the ever important fact that he is NOT a historian
lol yes, I like Furr but always feel the need to add that disclaimer since above all we must be materialists!
I've gotten to the point that any approval I have for his translations has been wholly soured by just how rabid a lot of online MLs have been in citing him and his polemics as fullproof marxist histories.
So much so that now people have sorta fooled themselves into thinking Parenti is that way as well, which couldn't be further from the truth
Fair enough, he does get vastly over-memed over other serious historians. Parenti as well, while a wonderfully polemical writer, is not a historian and his works like Blackshirts and Reds could do with some editing and citations for his more out there claims.