Grover Furr on the continuing revolution in Stalin-era history
Exposing the psychological warfare that has been waged against workers under the banner of ‘Soviet studies’.
Grover Furr, professor in mediaeval literature and specialist in Soviet history debunks ten of the greatest anti-Soviet and anti-Stalin lies.
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** Grover Furr will speak in London on Wednesday 24 July 2019 **
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holbourn. WC1R 4RC
6.30pm on Wed 24 July 2019
Join us!
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“No book that is not hostile to Josef Stalin can be published by an academic publisher.” There is no objectivity to be found in any officially-sanctioned ‘research’ about his period of leadership of the USSR. It is well-paid and widely disseminated psychological warfare.
Having learned the Russian and Ukrainian languages so as to be able to investigate the source material thoroughly, including the archives of the USSR that were opened in 1991, Professor Furr reveals with certainty and authority that the story presented to the general public about Stalin and socialism in the USSR is entirely false.
His findings confirm the Soviet and communist understanding that the class struggle intensifies rather than abates after the victorious revolution of the working people. They confirm that it absolutely necessary for the working class to establish its revolutionary dictatorship to defend and continue the revolution.
1. ‘Stalin was against democracy’
In fact, he was the moving force behind the 1936 constitution – the most democratic ever written.
2. ‘Khrushchev spoke the truth in his 1956 “secret speech”‘
In fact, it was lies from start to finish. As a result of those lies, the world communist movement halved over the next two years.
The capitalist press, anticommunist authors like Robert Conquest, and fake socialists such as the anarchists and Trotskyists all echoed Khrushchev’s lies.
Revisionist ‘official Soviet history’ from Khrushchev to Gorbachev paved the way to counter-revolution. ‘Stalin and Beria’s crimes’ were a complete fabrication by Khrushchev.
3. ‘The murder of Sergei Kirov was organised by Stalin’
Kirov was the first secretary of the Bolshevik party in Leningrad, and was murdered in December 1934 by Leonid Nikolaev, who was part of conspiracy to put Grigorii Zinoviev into power. Fourteen men were indicted, tried, convicted and executed for his murder in 1935.
Over the course of three years, a wider plot was uncovered, and links to Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev were proven, as well as to a military group around Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
In 1936, 1937 and 1938, the ‘Moscow trials’ were held, in which these anti-Soviet plotters were exposed. The Soviet narrative around all this is true, and Trotsky was also linked to this conspiracy.
4. ‘Stalin was like Hitler’
This lie was peddled once again in Bloodlands, a book by Timothy Snyder, professor at Yale, who has written dozens of articles for the New York review of books, the Times, etc. In his book he repeated the old imperialist trope of equating Stalin with Hitler and was lauded with prizes and rave reviews as a result. Snyder’s works have been translated into 26 languages and distributed around the world by a grateful imperialist media machine.
He claims that during World War 2 the Soviets killed between six and nine million civilians. Professor Furr checked every footnote and reference in Snyder’s book, reading the original sources in Polish and Ukrainian. He found every alleged ‘crime’ to be false and that Snyder was deliberately lying about the evidence as well as citing lying sources.
Not a single accusation against Stalin held up to scrutiny. These dedicated anticommunists could not find a single actual crime to accuse him of! This fact in itself is compelling evidence that there are no such crimes.
5. ‘Trotsky was wrongly accused by Stalin’
In fact, in the 1930s Trotsky was conspiring against the USSR and formed a coalition with right-wingers in the party with the aim of overthrowing socialist rule. Pierre Broué, his biographer, discovered letters between Leon Sedov (Trotsky’s son) and Trotsky that proved the existence of the block between Trotsky and the rights within the USSR, formed in 1932.
6. ‘Trotsky was a loyal Bolshevik’
Most shocking of all his crimes, Professor Furr found irrefutable evidence that Trotsky conspired with the Japanese and German governments against the USSR during WW2.
If his plans had been successful, the Soviet people and resources would have been put at the disposal of the fascist forces. The outcome of the war would have been completely different. The unmasking of this plot was a vital step in the defeat of fascism.
7. ‘The Moscow trials were faked’
In fact, all the evidence shows that the defendants were not coerced and that they were indeed guilty of assassinating Kirov and planning to assassinate Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich and others, and of attempting to organise a coup with the aid of the Japanese and the Germans.
Nikolai Yezhov (head of the NKVD head in 1937-8) was also proven to be conspiring with the Germans.
8. ‘Yezhov was falsely accused’
The evidence proves that Nikolai Yezhov really did head a conspiracy against the USSR and its leadership, and collaborated with Nazi fascism.
9. ‘The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a betrayal; the Soviet Union “invaded” Poland in 1939’
The pact was not an alliance; it was a vital step in buying the Soviet Union more time to build its defences, and all the allies agreed at the time that the USSR had not ‘invaded’ Poland but merely stopped the Germans from advancing over its entire territory after the Polish government collapsed and fled.
10. ‘The Soviets perpetrated the Katyn massacre’
In April 1943, during WW2, the Nazis claimed to have found the bodies of Polish officers allegedly shot by the Soviet army and buried in mass graves. This was Nazi propaganda designed to split the antifascist alliance, which was beating the German war machine.
In fact, all the evidence proves that Katyn was a Nazi German crime and that the allegation against the USSR was a lie.
Professor Furr also touches on other disputed topics such as Soviet collectivisation, the Dewey Commission (a group of Trotskyists who set up an inquiry into the charges against Trotsky), the alleged ‘Holodomor’ (famine in Ukraine).
The standard narratives about all these – taught to school and university students and propagated in books, films and TV shows – says Professor Furr, are all part of a great anti-Soviet lie.
“No book that is not hostile to Stalin can be published by an academic publisher,” he says. There is no objectivity to be found on this topic; it is pure psychological warfare against the workers of the world.
‘Soviet studies’ in the west, he concludes, is simply “propaganda with footnotes”.
