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> To start with, I am not going to spend $20 on anything written by Furr. I got > bootlegged copies of Sunkara and Blumenthal's books to review for the same > reason. I might consider that in Furr's case but Columbia does not have any > of his books. Quelle surprise. > Louis: I understand your feelings. So just two final (I promise) questions about Grover Furr for the listserv: 1. Are any parts of his work valuable as a corrective to the anti-Soviet writings of people like Robert Conquest? As you wrote, Furr reads Russian and has worked with Russian historians in examining the Soviet archives. So has he made any valuable discoveries? 2. Have there been any scholarly refutations of his claims? People like J. Arch Getty (Origins of the Great Purges), Robert Thurston (Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934-1941), and others who were able to look in the newly opened archives, were able to correct some of earlier false and exaggerated claims about the Stalin period. Is Furr continuing in this tradition? It’s amazing to me how much Furr written about this period: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=grover+furr&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 <https://www.amazon.com/s?k=grover+furr&ref=nb_sb_noss_1> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Furr <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Furr> The problem I have is that many of the people (like Conquest) who have written about Stalin despised Soviet socialism and wanted to paint it in the worse possible light. People like Furr, Losurdo (and many of us, I believe) think that Soviet socialism was imperfect but did accomplish a lot, so we have reason to question the old anti-communist narrative. Glenn _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
