Grover Carr Furr III (born April 3, 1944) is an American professor of Medieval English literature at Montclair State University who is best known for his revisionist views regarding the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. [1] Furr has written books, papers, and articles about Soviet history, especially the Stalin era, in which he has stated that the Holodomor, the 1932–33 famine in Soviet Ukraine, was not deliberate, describing it as a fiction created by pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists, [2] [3] that the Katyn massacre was committed by the Nazi Schutzstaffel and not the Soviet NKVD, [4] that all defendants in the Moscow Trials were guilty as charged, [5] that claims in Nikita Khrushchev's speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences are almost entirely false, that the purpose of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was to preserve the Second Polish Republic rather than partition it, [6] and that the Soviet Union did not invade Poland in September 1939, on the grounds that the Polish state no longer existed. [7] Furr claims that the mainstream narrative of the Soviet Union and in particular the Stalin era is biased and that many of the claims by mainstream historians are unfounded, because they follow "anti-Stalin paradigm". [8] [9]
Grover Furr graduated from McGill University, with a BA in English and received his Ph.D degree from Princeton University. He has been on the faculty at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where he specializes in Medieval English literature. [10]
In a CounterPunch article published in March 2017, Furr argues that "[t]here was a very serious famine in the USSR, including (but not limited to) the Ukrainian SSR, in 1932-33. But there has never been any evidence of a 'Holodomor' or 'deliberate famine,' and there is none today. The 'Holodomor' fiction was invented by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who found havens in Western Europe, Canada, and the USA after the war." [2] [ non-primary source needed ]
Contrary to the widely accepted view that the Moscow Trials were a series of show trials held at the instigation of Joseph Stalin between 1936 and 1938 against Trotskyists and members of Right Opposition of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, [11] Furr believes that all defendants in the Moscow Trials were at least guilty of what they were charged, [5] as argued in a 2017 article for Journal of Labor and Society , a quarterly journal published by Brill. [12]
In 2012, Furr stated that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed by the Soviet Union to preserve an independent Poland rather than planning a partition of Poland, as was in fact stipulated in the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. [6] Furr argues that Britain and France also signed the Munich Agreement, a nonaggression pact with Germany that partitioned another state and that Poland too took part in the partition of Czechoslovakia, making the Soviet Union not unique in its signing of a non-aggression pact with Germany. Furr criticises the Polish government in exile, arguing that it should have remained somewhere in Poland "at least long enough to surrender" or could have fled to Britain or France rather than in neutral Romania. In Furr's words, "[a] 'rump' Poland might finally have agreed to make a mutual defense pact that included the USSR. That would have restarted 'collective security', the anti-Nazi alliance between the Western Allies and the USSR that the Soviets sought but UK and French leaders rejected." According to Furr, this would have "greatly weakened Hitler; probably eliminating much of the Jewish Holocaust; certainly preventing the conquest of France, Belgium, and the rest of Europe; [and] certainly prevented many millions of deaths of Soviet citizens". [7]
Regarding the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, Furr stated in 2009 that the Soviet Union did not actually invade the Second Polish Republic because Poland no longer had a government and was not a state according to international law, further stating that "at the time it was widely acknowledged that no such invasion occurred." Furr believes that the state Poland no longer existed because the Polish government was interned in Romania, although it continued to be recognized by all Allied powers. According to Furr, the Polish government did not declare war on the Soviet Union and only declared war on Nazi Germany, as did Britain and France. Britain did not demand the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops and France had a mutual defense treaty with Poland. Secondly, the Polish General Inspector of the Armed Forces Edward Rydz-Śmigły ordered Polish soldiers not to fight the Soviets and instead to continue fighting the Germans while the Polish president Ignacy Mościcki, who was interned in Romania since September 17, 1939, tacitly admitted that Poland no longer had a government and maintained its stance of neutrality. Finally, Furr notes that the League of Nations did not determine the Soviet Union had invaded a member state and accepted the Soviet declaration of neutrality while it voted to expel the Soviets when the Soviet Union attacked Finland in the Winter War. [7]
Contrary to the historical consensus and as stated by both the Soviet Union (in 1991) and the Russian Federation (in 2004), Furr denies Soviet complicity in the Katyn massacre, arguing in a 2013 article in the Marxist journal Socialism and Democracy that the Katyn massacre was committed by the Nazi Schutzstaffel rather than by the Soviet NKVD. [4] In 2010, Furr said that he believed the widely accepted view until the discoveries in the mass graves at Volodymyr-Volynskyi, which he says prove his thesis. [13] According to Furr, some Poles that were implicated in Polish war crimes against Soviet POWs during 1919–1921, were likely killed by the Soviets while Nazis shot the others later. [14] Furr cites a 1985 interview of Lazar Kaganovich in which he stated that the Soviets shot 3,200 Poles – all of whom were guilty of capital crimes. [14]
Furr's book Khrushchev Lied, subtitled "The Evidence that Every Revelation of Stalin's (and Beria's) Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev's Infamous Secret Speech to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, Is Provably False", attacked the speech given by Nikita Khrushchev called "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", more commonly referred to in the West as the "Secret Speech" because it was delivered at an unpublicized closed session of party delegates, with guests and members of the press excluded.
According to a review by Gregory Elich in the Marxist academic journal Science & Society , "it would be too much to expect from Furr to live up to his claim that not one specific statement by Khrushschev turned out to be true", that Furr's dislike of Khrushschev "often interferes with his analysis," and that the arguments by Furr about all defendants of Moscow Trials being guilty do not survive fact checking. Elich writes that "Furr demolishes Khrushchev's points" regarding the assessment of Stalin as a wartime commander. [11]
Furr has disagreed with many historians of the Soviet Union, including Robert Conquest, [15] Sergey Romanov, [16] Timothy Snyder, [17] and Stephen Kotkin, [18] and accused them of dishonestly distorting what he believes to be the truth[ clarification needed ] in their publications on Soviet history.
Historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr stated that Furr "lauded the creation of Communist regimes" in Europe and Asia because "billions of workers all over the world are exploited, murdered, tortured, oppressed by capitalism." [1] In response to Furr's critical review, historian Gerald Meyer of Hostos Community College wrote that "Furr defends the Soviet state's expulsion of the Volga Germans, Tartars,[ sic ] Chechens, and other ethnic minorities from their homelands", "objects to my contention that collectivization of agriculture resulted in widespread resistance and famine", and "spends most of his energy attempting to refute the truism that Stalin was aware of and approved of huge numbers of political executions." [19]
Cathy Young, describing Furr in an article for The Daily Beast as "a 'revisionist' on a career-long quest to exonerate Stalin", said that Furr's work, along with that of Douglas Tottle, was being used as part of a larger propaganda campaign by the Russian government to muddy the waters and obfuscate the history of Soviet crimes. [20]
Historian Jarosław Szarek, president of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, [13] condemned Furr's work as denying Soviet war crimes, comparing it to "the scandalous manifestations of Holocaust denial." [21]
During a public debate at a university campus in 2012, Furr was quoted as saying: "I have yet to find one crime — yet to find one crime — that Stalin committed. ... I know they all say he killed 20, 30, 40 million people — it is bullshit. ... Goebbels said that the Big Lie is successful and this is the Big Lie: that the Communists — that Stalin killed millions of people and that socialism is no good." Both The American Conservative and the Washington Examiner wrote that Furr referred to Nazi propaganda because a mediator of the discussion suggested that Furr was using tactics invented by Joseph Goebbels. [22] [23]
According to British journalist John O'Sullivan writing for National Review , Furr is "a 'historian' who denies that Stalin committed any crimes at all. [...] On reading this, my first reaction was that Grover Furr must be a fictional character or teasing Internet hoax. Revisionist historians nostalgic for 'really existing socialism' have long sought to minimize the number of Stalin's victims and the scale of Soviet crimes. But the extravagance of Furr's claims — every accusation against Stalin false! — made it hard to take them seriously. They amount less to revisionism than to outright denial of historical reality." [24] Conservative writer David Horowitz included Furr in his book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, stating that Furr uses his university courses to "vent his political passions on his helpless students", citing Furr's denunciation of "Western imperialists" that was published in the Montclair State University student newspaper. [25] [26]
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with a secret protocol establishing Soviet and German spheres of influence across Eastern Europe. The pact was signed in Moscow on 24 August 1939 by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Stalinism is the totalitarian means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1924 to 1953 by dictator Joseph Stalin and in Soviet satellite states between 1944 and 1953. Stalin had previously made a career as a gangster and robber, working to fund revolutionary activities, before eventually becoming General Secretary of the Soviet Union. Stalinism included the creation of a one man totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, forced collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which Stalinism deemed the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev Thaw, a period of de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin's ideology to begin to wane in the USSR.
Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, as one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies. Molotov served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 during the era of the Second World War, and again from 1953 to 1956.
The Great Purge, or the Great Terror, also known as the Year of '37 and the Yezhovshchina, was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. It sought to consolidate Joseph Stalin's power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and aimed at removing the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky within the Soviet Union. The term great purge was popularized by the historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror, whose title was an allusion to the French Revolution's Reign of Terror.
Seventeen days after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, the Soviet Union entered the eastern regions of Poland and annexed territories totalling 201,015 square kilometres (77,612 sq mi) with a population of 13,299,000. Inhabitants besides ethnic Poles included Belarusian and Ukrainian major population groups, and also Czechs, Lithuanians, Jews, and other minority groups.
The Stalin Society is a British discussion group for individuals who see Joseph Stalin as a great Marxist–Leninist and wish to preserve his legacy. The society originated as a consequence of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and what the members perceived as a subsequent increase in the criticism of Stalin. According to the Stalin Society's website, "[t]he Stalin Society was formed in 1991 to defend Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and to refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him".
The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. Subsequent military operations lasted for the following 20 days and ended on 6 October 1939 with the two-way division and annexation of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This division is sometimes called the Fourth Partition of Poland. The Soviet invasion of Poland was indirectly indicated in the "secret protocol" of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed on 23 August 1939, which divided Poland into "spheres of influence" of the two powers. German and Soviet cooperation in the invasion of Poland has been described as co-belligerence.
The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD, at Stalin's order in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv NKVD prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by Nazi German forces in 1943.
The accusation that Joseph Stalin was antisemitic is much discussed by historians. Although part of a movement that included Jews and ostensibly rejected antisemitism, he privately displayed a contemptuous attitude toward Jews on various occasions that were witnessed by his contemporaries, and are documented by historical sources. Stalin argued that the Jews possessed a national character but were not a nation and were thus unassimilable. He argued that Jewish nationalism, particularly Zionism, was hostile to socialism. In 1939, he reversed communist policy and began a cooperation with Nazi Germany that included the removal of high-profile Jews from the Kremlin. As dictator of the Soviet Union, he promoted repressive policies that conspicuously impacted Jews shortly after World War II, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. At the time of his death, Stalin was planning an even larger campaign against Jews, which included the deportation of all Jews within the Soviet Union to Northern Kazakhstan. According to his successor Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin was fomenting the doctors' plot as a pretext for further anti-Jewish repressions.
As a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers became prisoners of war. Many of them were executed; 22,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre alone.
The Gestapo–NKVD conferences were a series of security police meetings organised in late 1939 and early 1940 by Germany and the Soviet Union, following the invasion of Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The meetings enabled both parties to pursue specific goals and aims as outlined independently by Hitler and Stalin, with regard to the acquired, formerly Polish territories. The conferences were held by the Gestapo and the NKVD officials in several Polish cities. In spite of their differences on other issues, both Heinrich Himmler and Lavrentiy Beria had similar objectives as far as the fate of pre-war Poland was concerned. The objectives were agreed upon during signing of the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty on 28 September 1939.
Katyń is a 2007 Polish historical drama film about the 1940 Katyn massacre, directed by Academy Honorary Award winner Andrzej Wajda. It is based on the book Post Mortem: The Story of Katyn by Andrzej Mularczyk. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film for the 80th Academy Awards.
In the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, which took place in September 1939, the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Soviets had ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. Since 1939 German and Soviet officials coordinated their Poland-related policies and repressive actions. For nearly two years following the invasion, the two occupiers continued to discuss bilateral plans for dealing with the Polish resistance during Gestapo-NKVD Conferences until Germany's Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, in June 1941.
Poland–Russia relations have a long and often turbulent history, dating to the late Middle Ages. Over centuries, there have been several Polish–Russian Wars, with Poland once occupying Moscow and later Russia controlling much of Poland in the 19th as well as in the 20th century, leading to strained relations and multiple Polish attempts at re-acquiring independence. Polish–Russian relations entered a new phase following the fall of communism, with relations warming under Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and later Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Relations began worsening considerably as a result of the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, and later the 2014 annexation of Crimea and especially the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Relations between the Polish and Russian governments have become extremely unfriendly, and according to a 2022 poll, only 2% of Poles view Russia positively, the lowest number in the world among countries polled.
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin is a 2010 book by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. It is about mass murders committed before and during World War II in territories controlled by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Anti-Katyn is a denialism campaign intended to reduce and obscure the significance of the Katyn massacre of 1940 — where approximately 22,000 Polish officers were murdered by the Soviet NKVD on the orders of Joseph Stalin — by referencing the deaths from disease of thousands of Imperial Russian and Red Army soldiers at Polish internment camps during the Interwar period.
The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of the "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The Katyn Commission or the International Katyn Commission was a committee formed in April 1943 under request by Germany to investigate the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish nationals during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, mostly prisoners of war from the invasion of Poland including Polish Army officers, intelligentsia, civil servants, priests, police officers and numerous other professionals. Their bodies were discovered in a series of large mass graves in the forest near Smolensk in Russia following Operation Barbarossa.
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, abbreviated as NKVD, was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the Eastern Front of World War II. The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946.
The anti-Stalinist left is a term that refers to various kinds of Marxist political movements that oppose Joseph Stalin, Stalinism, Neo-Stalinism and the system of governance that Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953. This term also refers to the high ranking political figures and governmental programs that opposed Joseph Stalin and his form of communism, such as Leon Trotsky and other traditional Marxists within the Left Opposition. In Western historiography, Stalin is considered one of the worst and most notorious figures in modern history.
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