Wheatcroft also solidly criticizes Applebaum for moralism and no consideration of the context or conditions in her work.

"are largely ignored or misunderstood by Appelbaum and by many of the current generation of specialists, who see no role for economic history. But the idea that it was someone’s mentality that caused the problem is not a new idea"

ArbyMakesFries had a good take about how center left historians could openly denounce these positions for being wrong in the 1980s/1990s, as Historikerstreit,

Hence why you can pretty easily find longer-established historians like Wheatcroft or Getty reacting to the new Snyder/Applebaum soft Holocaust revisionists as if they have tentacles growing out of their face, but at the same time not protesting too loudly, because they're fully well aware that Western historiography on the USSR has always been a deeply politicized and ideological enterprise, and anyone who's too stubborn to bend with the changing political winds is liable to get blown overboard.