Grover Furr
Grover Carr Furr III (born April 3, 1944) is an American professor of Medieval English literature at Montclair State University who is known for denial of a number of widely acknowledged crimes by the communist regime of the Stalin-era Soviet Union in his works on the history of the Soviet Union.
Biography
Born in Washington, D.C., Furr graduated in 1965 from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with a BA in English. He later obtained an MA and a PhD from Princeton University. Since February 1970, he has been on the faculty at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where he specializes in mediaeval English literature.[1]
Works, beliefs and reception
Furr has been described by historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr as a historical revisionist who "lauded creation of Communist regimes" in Europe and Asia because "millions of workers are exploited, murdered, tortured, oppressed by capitalism".[2] Writing for The Daily Beast, Cathy Young described him as "a 'revisionist' on a career-long quest to exonerate Stalin".[3] Furr believes that the Katyn massacre was committed by Nazis rather than by the NKVD.[4][5] According to Furr, some Poles were killed by the Soviets in retaliation for their treatment of Russian prisoners of war and other civilians which is part of controversies of the Polish–Soviet War while the Nazis shot the others later.[6] He has also claimed that the Soviet Union did not invade Poland in 1939[7] and that all defendants of the Moscow Trials were guilty as charged.[8][9] According to Russian government-owned news agency Sputnik, Furr believes that "the US and NATO have been by far the most aggressive and murderous power in the world since WW2" while "the USSR never did anything remotely comparable" to the crimes by the West.[10] In a CounterPunch article, Furr argues that "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".[11]
Furr's book Khrushchev Lied 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". According to a review of the book by Sven-Eric Holmstrom in the Journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy, "Furr identifies 61 allegations in Khrushchev’s speech. He concludes that, with only one minor exception, every one of them is demonstrably false. In essence Furr claims to have proven that this 'speech of the century' is a fraud from beginning to end".[12]
According to British journalist John O'Sullivan writing for National Review, Furr is "a 'historian' who denies that Stalin committed any crimes at all. [...] 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".[13] Conservative writer David Horowitz listed Furr as one of the "101 most dangerous academics in America" for "venting" his Stalinist and anti-American "political passions on his helpless students" by claiming that the United States got what it deserved on September 11 and misinforming his students by claims like the United States being behind the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.[14]
Furr has been also been accused of academic malpractice by Marxist-turned conservative Ronald Radosh.[15][better source needed] During a public debate in a university campus, Furr said that "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 bulls–t. [...] 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". Furr referred to Nazi propaganda because a mediator of the discussion suggested that Furr was using tactics invented by Joseph Goebbels.[16][17][better source needed]
Bibliography
English
- Furr, Grover (2011). Khrushchev Lied. 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. Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media. ISBN 9780615441054.
- Furr, Grover (2013). The Murder of Sergei Kirov: History, Scholarship and the Anti-Stalin Paradigm. Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media. ISBN 9780615802015.
- Furr, Grover (2014). Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands Is False. Plus: What Really Happened in: the Famine of 1932–33; the Polish Operation; the Great Terror; the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; the Soviet Invasion of Poland; the Katyn Massacre; the Warsaw Uprising; and Stalin's Anti-Semitism. New York City, New York: Red Star Publishers. ISBN 9780692200995.
- Furr, Grover (2015). Trotsky's Amalgams. Trotsky's Lies, The Moscow Trials as Evidence, The Dewey Commission. Trotsky's Conspiracies of the 1930s, Volume One. Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media. ISBN 9780692582244.
- Furr, Grover (2016). Yezhov vs. Stalin: The Truth about Mass Repressions and the So-Called Great Terror in the USSR. Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media. ISBN 9780692810507.
- Furr, Grover (2017). Leon Trotsky's Collaboration with Germany and Japan. Trotsky's Conspiracies of the 1930s, Volume Two. Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media. ISBN 9780692945735.
- Furr, Grover (2018). The Fraud of the Dewey Commission. New York City, New York: Red Star Publishers. ISBN 9781722702243.
- Furr, Grover (2018). The Moscow Trials as Evidence. New York City, New York: Red Star Publishers. ISBN 9781722842123.
- Furr, Grover (2018). The Mystery of the Katyn Massacre: The Evidence, The Solution. Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media. ISBN 9780692134252.
- Furr, Grover (2019). Stalin: Waiting for ... the Truth! Exposing the Falsehoods in Stephen Kotkin's Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941. New York City, New York: Red Star Publishers. ISBN 9780578445533.
- Furr, Grover (2019). Trotsky's Lies. Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media. ISBN 9780578521046.
- Furr, Grover (2020). New Evidence of Trotsky's Conspiracy. Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press and Media. ISBN 9780578649764.
References
- ^ "Grover Furr". Montclair State University. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ Haynes, John Earl; Klehr, Harvey (2003). In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage. San Francisco: Encounter Books. pp. 26–27. ISBN 9781893554726.
- ^ Young, Cathy (April 13, 2015). "Russia Denies Stalin's Killer Famine". The Daily Beast. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ Furr, Grover (2013). "The 'Official' Version of the Katyn Massacre Disproven?" (PDF). Socialism and Democracy. 27 (2): 96–129. doi:10.1080/08854300.2013.795268.
- ^ Ivanov, Valery (April 2, 2017). "Катынский расстрел: продолжатели дела Геббельса" Katynskiy rasstrel: prodolzhateli dela Gebbel'sa [Katyn Execution: The Successors of the Goebbels Case]. NewsBalt (in Russian). Retrieved April 18, 2017.
- ^ Furr, Grover (August 6, 2013). "The Katyn Forest Whodunnit". Montclair State University. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
- ^ Furr, Grover (2009). "Did the Soviet Union Invade Poland in September 1939?". Montclair State University. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ Furr, Grover (July 31, 2010). "The Moscow Trials and the 'Great Terror' of 1937–1938: What the Evidence Shows". Montclair State University. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ Furr, Grover (September 2017). "Yezhov vs. Stalin: The Causes of the Mass Repressions of 1937-1938 in the USSR" (PDF). Labor and Society. 20 (3): 325–347. doi:10.1111/wusa.12297. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
- ^ Blinova, Ekaterina (August 2, 2015). "Who Controls the Past Controls the Future: Why Does West Hate Stalin?". Sputnik. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ Furr, Grover (March 3, 2017). "The "Holodomor" and the Film "Bitter Harvest" are Fascist Lies". CounterPunch. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ Holmstrom, Sven-Eric (August 2, 2013). "Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied (Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press & Media LLC, 2011". Journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ O'Sullivan, John (August 14, 2015). "What to Make of the Guardian's Shameful Robert Conquest Obituary?". National Review. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ Horowitz, David (2006). The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing. pp. 186–189. ISBN 0-89526-003-4.
- ^ Radosh, Ronald (November 13, 2012). "Academic Malpractice: The Case of Grover Furr". PJ Media. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ "Your tax dollars at work: Prof says Stalin did not kill millions of people — that's 'the Big Lie'". Washington Examiner. November 13, 2012. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
- ^ Dreher, Rod (November 26, 2012). "'They Lied, Nobody Died'". The American Conservative. Retrieved July 31, 2020.