GROVER FURR criticas sent by Lucio 02.13.21.docx
Since /u/kieslowskifan gave you the short answer (and
he is absolutely correct), I'll give you the "long answer." I do this
because often the relative terseness of dismissals of Furr is incorrectly taken
to mean that no one has any specific arguments against him, and this allows his
fans to continue circulating his stuff in all apparent seriousness.
First of all, to directly answer your question: Furr's
positions are not supported whatsoever. Literally no major historians of the
Purges -- Getty, Fitzpatrick, Khlevniuk, etc. -- believe that the Moscow Trials
were fair or accurate. A quick search on JSTOR will reveal that Furr is neither
published nor cited in any peer-reviewed Russian history journal in English,
save for a single book review in the Russian History Review. So, not only do
professional historians disagree with Furr, they almost universally ignore him
as well.
This
is an ignorant comment.
*It
is the logical fallacy of ‘argument to authority,’ often called ‘appeal to
authority.’
*
The fact that mainstream historians do not agree with me is not evidence that
my research is in error. Nor is the fact that I do not agree with them evidence
that they are wrong.
*
Only evidence is evidence.
In fact the only relevant place he does appear is in a
footnote in a paper by J. Arch Getty thanking him for certain information. This
is important because Furr relies heavily on Getty and often insinuates that he
and Getty have identical views. This, however, is false.
*
This is a lie.
I
never, ever suggest that Getty and I have identical views.
For instance: through archival research in the Trotsky
papers at Harvard, Getty discovered that Trotsky had connections with a
"bloc" in 1932 but concludes that "Trotsky envisioned no
'terrorist' role for the bloc."1 Furr, on the other hand, proclaims that
"Getty's discovery in the Trotsky archive corroborates the testimony of
the Moscow Trial defendants."2
What
I state is correct. The discovery of the ‘bloc’ corroborates testimony of
Moscow Trials defendants, who also state that there was a ‘bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites.’
He further argues that evidence of this bloc's
existence past 1932 and its terrorist activities in Trotsky's correspondence
have, quite simply, been scrubbed or hidden from the archives.3
* This is a lie. There is a
great deal of evidence of this bloc in the Soviet archives. I have published a
lot of it, and there is a lot more in collections of Soviet documents.
There is no further evidence
of this bloc in the Harvard Trotsky Archive. But Mr Purdy says “archives.”
This brings us
to our second point. Why is Grover Furr not taken seriously in academic Russian
history? The answer that there is a concerted effort by professional
historians and academic institutions to suppress the truth by falsifying
evidence and marginalizing Furr is about as plausible as the claim Big
Pharma is suppressing studies that prove herbal remedies cure cancer. The
reason is much simpler: quite frankly, Furr's work is amateur and wouldn't even
get a passing grade in a decently rigorous undergraduate course. It's laden
with dubious argumentation and poor source evaluation.
This is two statements. The
first is false; the second is a lie.
It is true that mainstream professional
historians falsify evidence about Stalin, and I have demonstrated this in my
books.
I have never said that there
is a “concerted effort … to marginalize” me. This statement is a lie.
To give a
specific example, let’s look at Furr’s approach to the lack of non-Soviet
sources corroborating or confirming the central charges of the Moscow Trials
(since /u/kieslowskifan brought it up), which pretty much all revolve around
collaboration with foreign powers. Furr begins by noting that
In countries
still extant it is normal to keep intelligence archives secret indefinitely.
This is certainly the case in the USA. We suggest it is logical to suspect the
same thing in the case of Germany and Japan.4
This rather
conveniently ignores that not only is Nazi Germany no longer extant, but that
many of the important government archives in Berlin were under the Soviet
occupation zone in Berlin, and neither East German nor Soviet scholars who had
access to such documents were known for their fondness for Trotskyists.5
* I did not say that
evidence exists in the German and/or Japanese archives of Trotsky’s
collaboration. I said it might exist there.
He then goes on
to note that there is a "great deal of evidence" that Tukhachevsky
with collaborated the Germans -- and, in the next sentence, admits that
"we have only indirect confirmation of this from German archives" and
only "somewhat more direct" from the Czech archives.6 He provides
citations for neither "confirmation," nor is it clear what a
"somewhat more direct" confirmation is compared to an "indirect"
one.
* This article from 2010 is
already over 100 pages long. I simply could not make it any longer by including
this evidence.
I do include it in my latest
book:
Trotsky and the Military Conspiracy: Soviet and
Non-Soviet Evidence; with the Complete Transcript of the “Tukhachevsky Affair”
Trial - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578816032
In another
smoking gun, he brings up that "[r]umor, at least, of [the Moscow Trial
defendants'] collaboration [with German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord]
evidently survived in Hammerstein's family."7
Yes, and I give the citation
to this book.
He follows up on
all this by saying that the lack of evidence doesn't matter anyway, because
"no one should expect a conspiracy like this be documented anywhere, ever,
much less in 'in archives.'"8
Correct! No one should.
Conspiracies like this are not put in writing. I cite two quotations: one from
the CIA, one from the Communist International, to support this point.
He cites in his
favor the lack of documentation for "the successful conspiracy against
Lavrentii Beria," which "must have involved at least half a dozen
men." This explanation rather conveniently elides the fact that the coup
against Beria involved a handful of people over the course of a couple months
at most, as opposed to an alleged clandestine terrorist organization involving
thousands of people that operated over years and collaborated with state-level
actors.
The Germans and Japanese
would not document conspiracies with “thousands of people.”
Given the fact
we do in fact have documentation for clandestine terrorist organizations at
this scale in other instances, it is a bit implausible that no documents exist
for this particular case.
It is illogical to suggest
that no conspiracy existed because the evidence for that conspiracy does not
exist in one specific place. There is plenty of evidence of the conspiracy
elsewhere.
Furr, of course,
then quickly says there are non-Soviet documents that confirm or corroborate
the Moscow Trials charges! He cites four documents:
An admission by
the Japanese Minister of War that they were collaborating with
"oppositionists," cited in "Soviet Links Tokyo With
'Trotskyism'" in the New York Times, March 2 1937.9 A quick look at this
article from the NYT archives reveals it is a dispatch from Vladivostok from
the Tass News Agency made by Walter Duranty. Furr either didn't read this
carefully or he's deliberately lying about its "non-Soviet" nature.
It is Japanese evidence. I
cite the NYTimes article, which is taken from TASS, which took it from the
Japanese press. I have the article from the Japanese press, in prewar Japanese,
of course, and I have the TASS material, in Russian, on which the Times story
was based. Neither the Japanese nor the Russian text can be understood by the
readers of this 2010 article – which was already far too long.
An "Arao
telegram," which was "extant at least in 1962-1963 though never heard
from since."10 Generally speaking it's considered bad form to cite texts
whose existence is uncertain and whose contents unverifiable -- not that he actually
reproduces the text of the "telegram" anyway.
* See my latest book for a
full discussion of the Arao telegram, including the test. No one denies that it
is cited and discussed in the Shvernik Report, presented to Khrushchev in the
1960s.
A document "in
the Czech national archives," "corroborated by correspondence found
in German archives."11 In the footnote he notes that "these documents
have long been acknowledged by Western and Russian scholars" but neglects
to actually tell us which documents these are. Once again, no text is
reproduced.
* See my latest book for an
entire chapter on this Czech document, including a translation and the
reproduction of the first page, plus a thorough discussion of how anticommunist
and anti-Stalin researchers have tried to deny it.
A private
admission by NKVD general Lyushkov that there were conspirators working with
Tukhachevsky to collaborate with the Japanese military to "inflict defeat
upon the Soviet military."12 He cites Alvin D. Coox's two-part article
"The Lesser of Two Hells: NKVD General G.S. Lyushkov's Defection to Japan,
1938-1945" but fails to provide a page number (joy!). Nevertheless it
appears to be based on a passage from the second part where Lyushkov lists
Tukhachevsky as part of a faction in the Red Army which "favored a
military putsch."13 Furr, however, neglects to note Coox himself is rather
skeptical of taking Lyushov's statements at face value, noting they
"reflect[ed] to a degree what his hosts must have wanted to hear."14
In effect, he's cherry-picked a statement from a very long article, much of
which does not really support Furr's argument at all.
Coox cites this Japanese
evidence at length. It is very damning.
Coox then attempts to
“explain it away,” because it is taboo in
mainstream Soviet history to suggest that Tukhacheveky & Co. may have been
guilty, that Stalin et al. may have been correct, that the Rights really had
been conspiring with them, etc.
But the evidence Coox has
uncovered proves just that.
Again: the fact that Coox
does not agree with my conclusions does not mean that my conclusions are
incorrect, any more than the fact that I do not agree with his conclusions
means that he is incorrect.
Only evidence is important.
I could go on,
but the whole book is like this -- in fact, all his books are like this.
This is a lie and, I
suspect, a bluff. Mr Purdy has not studied my books. And his criticisms of this
article from 2010 are invalid.
He is sloppy with "citations"
Nonsense! This is a lie.
and cherrypicks
constantly.
I doubt Mr Purdy knows what
“cherrypicking” is. In any case, I do not do it, ever.
He exhibits classic denialist and conspiracy
theory tropes: all the real evidence is purged or missing and all the evidence
to the contrary is forged or irrelevant.
This is a lie. I cite a
great deal of evidence. Mr Purdy just ignores it.
Lack of evidence is explained away as being
part of the conspiracy. He relies on a sympathetic ear and an unwillingness to
actually follow up on sources to be taken seriously by anybody.
Mr Purdy relies on lying,
logical fallacies, and his own ignorance of how to do historical research. See
above.
J. Arch Getty,
Origins of the Great Purges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 121
Grover Furr,
Evidence of Leon Trotsky's Collaboration With Germany and Japan, 32
ibid, 38-39
ibid, 30
Although rather
amusingly he suggests on the same page that Khrushchev possibly had the Soviet
archives purged of references to Trotsky's guilt. Although in the mind of an
unreconstructed Stalinist Khrushchev might be a Trotskyite, it is worth noting
Trotsky was never rehabilitated by the Soviet government and that his
literature remained banned until glasnost.
Furr, 30
ibid
ibid, 31
ibid, 32-33
ibid, 33
ibid
ibid
Alvin B Coox,
"The Lesser of Two Hells: NKVD General G.S. Lyushov's Defection to Japan,
1938-1945, Part II," The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 11, no. 4
(1998), 85
Alvin B Coox,
"The Lesser of Two Hells: NKVD General G.S. Lyushov's Defection to Japan,
1938-1945, Part I," The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 11, no. 3
(1998), 149
level 2
kieslowskifan
Top Quality
Contributor
9 points
·
3 years ago
Well done! One
of the annoying things about Furr's partisans is that they argue that
mainstream Soviet/Russian historians are the second coming of Robert Conquest
when they are not cherry-picking them. This misses that Conquest is not really
all that important to the direction of Soviet studies these days either outside
of a few circles. Much of this scholarship is more sophisticated than reciting
a litany of sins of the Soviet government. There are plenty of historians that
tackle the early Soviet state and the Stalin turn with a degree of nuance as
well as sympathy for both the ideals of the Soviet experiment as well as for
its people. One does not have to be a kneejerk anticommunist to be outraged by
show trials, mass executions, a growing police state, and indifference to mass
starvation. Many of Furr's partisans miss this and transform the rather rich
historiography on the interwar USSR into undifferentiated mass of
counterrevolutionary anticommunists.
Continue this
thread
level 2
commiespaceinvader
Moderator |
Holocaust | Nazi Germany | Wehrmacht War Crimes
8 points
·
3 years ago
This rather
conveniently ignores that not only is Nazi Germany no longer extant, but that
many of the important government archives in Berlin were under the Soviet
occupation zone in Berlin, and neither East German nor Soviet scholars who had
access to such documents were known for their fondness for Trotskyists.
To further add
on why Furr is talking bullshit here: While it is true that the Soviets carted
German documents by the train load to Moscow where they only became available
in the 1990s (and now aren't so available anymore due to government policy in
Russia at the moment), the files of the German intelligence agency most likely
responsible for an operation such as Furr alleges are the files of the Amt
Ausland Abwehr, the German military intelligence agency of the Wehrmacht. These
files did notably not fall into the hands of the Soviets but rather of the
Western Allies and have been available at the Berlin Document Center, the
National Archives in Washington and since the hand over of the BDC in Berlin's
Bundesarchiv under the signature RW 5 Amt Ausland / Abwehr. None of these files
such as they exist contain information on what Furr alleges and have been
available to scholars and the public since the late 1940s.
The reason he
never mentions the concrete correspondence in German archives as well as the
Czech documents allegedly confirming the German documents is that either don't
exist or if they exist at all, they are seriously misread and misinterpreted by
him and he knows it.
Additionally,
even Soviet and Eastern German scholars did usually not have access to the full
extent of captured Soviet documents kept in the special archives of the
NKVD/KGB during the time of Soviet rule, which is evident by the fact that the
GDR archives are full of microfilms of bought and copied documents from other
archives. Given this extremely close vetting process of access and documents,
it can only be assumed that if there was any document that gave off a whiff of
Trotskite conspiracy, it would have been made accessible to a variety of
scholars to prove the danger of the fascists to the USSR.
Basically, as
you and /u/kieslowskifan have already demonstrated: Furr is talking BS.
Continue this
thread
level 2
vris92
2 points
·
3 years ago
Excellent
answer, will refer to this in the future. You guys are great.
level 1
kieslowskifan
Top Quality
Contributor
17 points
·
3 years ago
How reliable is
Grover Furr? The short answer is not at all. Furr is a rank Stalinist apologist
and not a professional historian. While the latter is not an automatic
disqualification, his books and articles twists evidence and interpretations to
suit an agenda of rehabilitating Stalin, much as David Irving selectively read
archival evidence to rehabilitate Hitler. As such, he is usually banded about
by the folks over a r/Communism as proof that the glorious Soviet experiment
was never tainted by such sundry details like Gulags, mass murder, political
purges, or invasions of neutral territory. /u/International_KB went into a
delicious takedown of Furr here and of the wider attempt to rehabilitate Stalin
on badhistory here. Furr's evidence for the Trials pretty much argues for the
guilt of the accused on account of their confessions. Not only is there no
evidence from either Japanese, Polish, or German archives that they were agents
of this government (and such a wide-ranging conspiracy was most unlikely at the
time but fit within established propaganda narratives set up in the USSR since
the 1920s), but these confessions were obtained in a system that regularly used
torture. As for the Kirov murder, which was one of the main charges of the
Moscow Trials, Matthew Lenoe's massive doorstopper of a The Kirov Murder and
Soviet History has concluded that the bulk of the evidence suggests this was
the work of a "lone wolf" and not a conspiracy by either Stalin or
those purged.
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