/edu/ - Education

>books with direct counter arguments
Unironically no books or proper responses have been written to fully debunk him except some "skeptic responses" which Furr responded to.

>>2032
>some "skeptic responses" which Furr responded to.
source? also which of Furr's books should I read?

>>2033
>Which of Furrs books
Khruschev Lied is an excellent one and I also suggest his work on Katyn which you can find on his website.
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/furr_katyn_preprint_0813.pdf
>source
His response to Mike Ely: https://stalinist75.rssing.com/chan-52237329/all_p1.html
Someone elses response to Ely as well: https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/142976-Response-to-Kasama-s-attack-on-Grover-Furr

Quora group on Stalin https://www.quora.com/q/manofsteel

>>2030
&ltDomenico Losurdo
&ltStalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend
&ltThe figure of Stalin occupies a central position in the history of the twentieth century. Bloody dictator but also organizer of an empire of immense size, creator of the gulag and destroyer of the Nazi concentration camps, cynical manipulator of the ideals of social renewal and object of an unprecedented cult of personality, the judgment on the "iron Georgian" followed closely the luck of his character until the final sentence after the fall of the Berlin wall. Domenico Losurdo returns to analyze the myth of Stalin to describe its rise and fall.

&ltQ: Fidel, for most Latin American revolutionary leaders, the current crisis of socialism has a mastermind: Josef Stalin.

A: I believe Stalin made big mistakes but also showed great wisdom.

In my opinion, blaming Stalin for everything that occurred in the Soviet Union would be historical simplism, because no man by himself could have created certain conditions. It would be the same as giving Stalin all the credit for what the USSR once was. That is impossible! I believe that the efforts of millions and millions of heroic people contributed to the USSR's development and to its relevant role in the world in favor of hundreds of millions of people.

I have criticized Stalin for a lot of things. First of all, I criticized his violation of the legal framework.

I believe Stalin committed an enormous abuse of power. That is another conviction I have always had.

I feel that Stalin's agricultural policy did not develop a progressive process to socialize land. In my opinion, the land socialization process should have begun earlier and should have been gradually implemented. Because of its violent implementation, it had a very high economic and human cost in a very brief period of history.

I also feel that Stalin's policy prior to the war was totally erroneous. No one can deny that western powers promoted Hitler until he became a monster, a real threat. The terrible weakness shown by western powers before Hitler cannot be denied. This at encouraged Hitler's expansionism and Stalin's fear, which led Stalin to do something I will criticize all my life, because I believe that it was a flagrant violation of principles: seek peace with Hitler at any cost, stalling for time.

During our revolutionary life, during the relatively long history of the Cuban Revolution, we have never negotiated a single principle to gain time, or to obtain any practical advantage. Stalin fell for the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact at a time when Germans were already demanding the delivery of the Danzig Corridor.

I feel that, far from gaining time, the nonaggression pact reduced time, because the war broke out anyway. Then, in my opinion, he made another big mistake, because when Poland was being attacked, he sent troops to occupy that territory, which was disputed because it had a Ukrainian or Russian population, I am not sure.

I also believe that the little war against Finland was another terrible mistake, from the standpoint of principles and international law.

Stalin made a series of mistakes that were criticized by a large part of the world, and which placed Communists - who were great friends of the USSR - in a very difficult position by having to support each one of those episodes.

Since we are discussing this topic, I must tell you that I have never discussed it with any journalist (or on any other occasion, he added).

The things I mentioned are against principles and doctrine; they are even contrary to political wisdom. Although it is true that there was a period of one year and nine months from September 1939 to June 1941 during which the USSR could have rearmed itself, Hitler was the one who got stronger.

If Hitler had declared war on the USSR in 1939, the destruction would have been less than the destruction caused in 1941, and he would have suffered the same fate as Napoleon Bonaparte. With the people's participation in an irregular war, the USSR would have defeated Hitler.

Finally, Stalin's character, his terrible distrust of everything, made him commit several other mistakes: one of them was falling in the trap of German intrigue and conducting a terrible, bloody purge of the armed forces and practically beheading the Soviet Army on the eve of war.

&ltQ: What do you believe were Stalin's merits?

A: He established unity in the Soviet Union. He consolidated what Lenin had begun: party unity. He gave the international revolutionary movement a new impetus. The USSR's industrialization was one of Stalin's wisest actions, and I believe it was a determining factor in the USSR's capacity to resist.

One of Stalin's - and the team that supported him - greatest merits was the plan to transfer the war industry and main strategic industries to Siberia and deep into Soviet territory.

I believe Stalin led the USSR well during the war. According to many generals, Zhukov and the most brilliant Soviet generals, Stalin played an important role in defending the USSR and in the war against Nazism. They all recognized it.

I think there should be an impartial analysis of Stalin. Blaming him for everything that happened would be historical simplism.

https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1992/06/03.htm

Is Furr and Getty the only ones?

>>2992
Based cigar

>>2030
I think learning about his WW2 decisions, writings, etc really made me respect him more (even as a Bordigist/leftcom). Had Trotsky been in charge we may have seen the USA, UK, Nazis, and Japan team up against the Soviet world revolution. Stalin made some wise decisions and was warning the west about Hitler for a while

>>2030
The criticism of Furr is usually:

1.) He takes confessions and witness testemonies during the Moscow Trials at face value

2.) He seems to approach a subject already convinced that Stalin did nothing wrong, so he is incapable of carrying out a historical investigation because he's already steadfast in his beliefs as to what happened and just uses the information he finds to somehow rationalize them

A lot of historians of course do the latter, and there is no "truly neutral source" - but with Furr it reaches levels of bias that tend to seriously compromise his academic work. Other than that, Furr is right that his critics never present longer responses to him and just smear his character by painting him as an irrelevant crank not worthy of a response. Probably because he annoys the hell out of them - imagine being a historian and want to write about the USSR, and there is this guy who will check your work and meticulously go through every single footnote of yours and cross-references it with the Russian archives. It would annoy the hell out of me even if I would write a pro-Stalin book.

>>4420
Oh and one more thing: What's suspicious to me is that while they call Furr an irrelevant crank, the academic history community has gone out of their way to excessively debunk Holocaust deniers like Irving. With Furr, they don't do this, which gives the indication that there is probably some meat to his arguments.

He was the asshole of the group. He didn't have a firm line and shifted often to the position that was to be favored by the majority. His first concern was to secure power for himself and then everything else was to be done.
He also kinda turned marxism-leninism into a creed, not to be further developed.

>>4422
However this is to say, the "opposition" was no real alternative, as they were a bunch of armchair fags loving to endlessly debate, yet not doing anything proper. They wouldn't have industrialized the country in time and probably would be annihilated by nazi Germany. They were dengists before Deng (especially Bukharin).

>>4423
However again, Trotsky was calling for more power to the industry already at the end of 1922, when NEP went into full force and he was against a huge compromise with the peasantry.
Trotsky established the victorious Red Army, he could perhaps also be competent in dealing with Nazis - maybe even more so and would avoid catastrophic defeats in Minsk, Kyiv, Leningrad …

>>4420
I recall Grover Furr early in his research went in expecting some of the liberal propaganda to be true and was shocked at how it was mostly made up and that gave him his conviction that it's all bullshit

You can hear the shock in his voice when he says it, like he was reliving that moment of truth