Ask Lemmygrad

Decent article. The second half is stronger than the first. I'll make some comments about the first half.

Furr's book is strong because he sets out to examine the truth of Khrushchev's 'secret' speech and carefully disproves almost every claim in it. He does not set out to argue what Stalin did or who he was. That would be a huge biographical work, for which there would be a host of evidential problems.

There's no grandstanding. It's well written but it's not rhetorical. It's all very matter-of-fact. It straightforwardly shows that the popular myth of Stalin, a view based on Trotsky's work and Khrushchev's speech, is false.

In a field (world, rather) where the anti-Stalin paradigm is supreme, Furr's contribution is huge. And punchier for being careful and limited.

Half of the book is extracts of the sources. The reader can make up their own mind whether the sources support Furr's or Khrushchev's argument or something else. The author provides an alternative interpretation of some of those sources than Furr. You might want to check them and see what you think.

Other studies provided a more nuanced view of Stalin, who emerged as less powerful, more competent, more hands-on, and more seriously theoretical than the brutal tyrant drawn by the totalitarian paradigm.

Stalin was a fierce theoretician. The only reason why anyone would need this point reiterating is because the Stalin-as-totalitarian paradigm is so widespread. After the mid-1950s, the prime evidence for it was Khrushchev's speech.

In this context, disproving the contents of that speech is monumental. The critical article in question is correct that Furr does not go on to tell you what is true about Stalin. But here's the problem. Painting an accurate picture of Stalin after discrediting the 'secret' speech is only one task among many now the speech is discredited.

Knowing who Stalin was is kinda by-the-by. The article itself suggests that others have already done that work, too. Criticising Furr for not doing something similar takes a narrow view of the text and fails to grasp a significance of its contribution. 'Stalin' is a stand-in for 'Soviet' or 'Bolshevik'. When people attack Stalin they don't care about the man. They are attacking communism. The questions that now need answering to far beyond 'Who was Stalin?'

With the Speech discredited, we must re-evaluate the USSR under Stalin's leadership and afterwards. Key questions include: To what extent was Khrushev responsible for it's dissolution? Who else was involved? Why? Answers to these questions will help to avoid the dissolution of future attempts at socialist construction.

Arguing that Furr should have told us who Stalin was might treat Stalin as the most important character. He was surely crucial to the USSR and the fight against Nazism. His life is worth knowing. But only as one narrative among multiple. Furr sweeps away the personality cult. We should not bring it back by insisting that Stalin is the centre of all Soviet research.

It is this interpretation that leads me to reject one of the article's claims and recurring themes, that Furr tries to absolve Stalin of responsibility for everything that Khrushchev pins on him alone. I think my interpretation is supported by quotes from the book in the article, which acknowledge that some serious mistakes were made in the USSR.

It is not 'quibbl[ing] over minor points' to find out what didn't happen. Recognising who was wronged, and how, is necessary for justice. Accepting lies about crimes that didn't happen dilutes the loss of those who suffered and disguises the reasons for Stalin's actions.

The book’s problems start with its title and argument. To call every Khrushchev revelation a lie has dramatic appeal and a figurative truth, but no one in their right mind could buy this as literal truth, because no one in their right mind could imagine Khrushchev or anyone else speaking for hours before a congress of the Communist Party about revelations that contained nothing but falsehoods. Even Furr himself does not believe this.

Anti-communists treat the speech this way. It's those who hold power today and from under whom the rug must be pulled.

A reader, however, has to wait until page 142 to hear the author acknowledge that “it would, of course, be absurd to say that every one of Khrushchev’s statements is false.” Yet, by not admitting that Khrushchev’s “revelations” artfully mixed truths and lies, this absurdity is precisely what Furr is guilty of. Having staked this extreme claim, Furr makes no effort to sort out the truth and falsehood of Khrushchev’s speech, but proceeds to focus only on what in Khrushchev’s statements were dubious, even if it means lumping together the trivial, disputable and half lies with the significant, provable and total lies.

I disagree with this challenge. My understanding of Furr's claim was that he was unable to disprove (due to lack of evidence) some of the 'revelations' in the Speech. I did not interpret it to mean that Furr was unable to disprove (i.e. that he only partly disproved) the revelations that he claims to have disproved.

If the claim is true in the form in which it is presented, I'll suggest that Furr's point is to identify the lies, not the truths (maybe this is pedantic). Again, anti-communists swallow the speech whole. It is up to them to defend the speech, not Furr.

The idea that Furr should be giving a 'balanced', 'both sides' view, re-arming anti-communists, is a strange one coming from an ML who apparently ultimately agrees with Furr, for different reasons.

If a conclusion relies on several premises and any one of those is faulty, the conclusion is reductio as absurdum. If one's purpose is to challenge certain conclusions, it is unnecessary to remark on truthful premises. You only need to knock the foundations of just enough premises to shake their conclusions.

Furr is clear about his thesis: he is not attempting to give a balanced account of how dishonest Khrushchev was, only to prove that he was dishonest and to argue that we need a wholesale reassessment of what people believe because of the Speech.

Moreover, when the evidence to make his case is unavailable, Furr slips into the role of a dubious defense attorney who nitpicks the evidence, badgers witnesses and kicks up sand.

This is a strange criticism. It contradicts the above assertion that Furr ignores some 'truths' in the speech. The anti-Stalin paradigm is prevalent and practically unshakable. It even appears in the review article. Furr's thesis was to disprove the lies in the Speech.

It is hard if not impossible to prove a negative. While it may be possible to disprove some premises, it becomes difficult for Furr to prove that the opposite is true. Hence the carefulness of the overall thesis: Khrushchev lied, not Stalin XYZ'd.

Criticising Furr for not making an argument that he does not have the evidence to support is not a valid criticism. It is a praiseworthy finding. Stating that Furr should have argued something else and then showing that Furr did not provide evidence for the something else is not a valid criticism.

Where there is no evidence, an argument will have to suffice. This will involve highlighting logical inconsistencies and disproving the evidence that is available. I'm unsure why that's a criticism except as a rhetorical device. Marxists do love their polemics.

The writer clarifies (emphasis added):

Take Furr’s treatment of one of the most important episodes in Soviet history, the Kirov assassination. … Kirov was a supporter and friend of Stalin’s …. In the secret speech, Khrushchev implied that Stalin was behind Kirov’s murder.

Furr argues … the opposition leaders convicted were in fact part of a murder conspiracy. Furr … fails to prove th[is]. Moreover, his refutation is superficial and tendentious[,] takes up less than two pages and involves quotations from three historians, all of whom dispute Stalin’s involvement in Kirov’s murder.

One would never know from Furr’s account that Khrushchev’s implication became the conventional wisdom among such Cold War Sovietologists as Robert Conquest, The Great Terror… In other words, a serious rebuttal of what Khrushchev implied would involve acknowledging what the Cold Warriors have written in support Khrushchev’s view and then refuting or at least disputing it. … In other words, sometimes Furr has a stronger case than he bothers to make.

This implies the book is weak but that Furr is still right. Suggesting that Furr engage more with Conquest is hard to explain. He was an anti-Soviet who spent his life writing anti-communist literature, working for the British Foreign Office, I believe, and later advising Thatcher.

The question is not, 'Why didn't Furr engage with an author who lacks credibility?' but 'To what extent were Conquest's later claims about the USSR based on the Speech?' (Which falls outside the scope of the book.)

The first part of the article argues the Speech became key evidence for the 'conventional wisdom' about Stalin. Why would Furr give any credence to the people who believed the Speech and used the speech as evidence, when he's arguing that anything that treats the speech as fact is wrong?

If Furr is right, he doesn't have to unpick works that come later. He already reduced them to absurdity. It is on the anti-communists to demonstrate why their work is still accurate. (As it happens, Furr has unpicked major anti-communist works published since.)

The claims in the first half of the article are perhaps too strong. Furr could likely improve another edition by taking the article seriously. It seems well researched and has similar goals as Furr. I'd hazard a guess that it was written in good faith but it misses the mark by trying to be thoroughly critical in an 'academic' way.

I'm not sure if this makes anything clearer for you.