Blood Lies

by Grover Furr

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" (ISBN: 978-0-692-20099-5) by Grover Furr

"Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder" (N.Y: Basic Books, 2010) is by far the most successful attempt to date to equate Stalin with Hitler, the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. It has received dozens of rave reviews, prizes for historiography; and has been translated into 25 languages.

Snyder's main target is Joseph Stalin. His broader claim is that the Soviets killed 6 to 9 million innocent civilians while the Nazis were killing about 14 million. Snyder finds parallels between Soviet and Nazi crimes at every turn.

Grover Furr methodically checked every single footnote to anything that could be construed as a crime by Stalin, the USSR, or pro-Soviet communists. Snyder's main sources are in Polish and Ukrainian, in hard-to-find books and articles. Many sources are reprinted in Blood Lies in their original languages - Polish, Ukrainian, German, Russian - always with English translations.

Furr has found that every single "crime" Snyder alleges is false - a fabrication. Often Snyder's sources do not say what he claims. Often Snyder cites anticommunist Polish and Ukrainian secondary sources that do the lying for him. Not a single accusation holds up.
Blood Lies exposes the lies and falsehoods behind Soviet history of the Stalin period with the same meticulous attention to detail as Furr's 2011 work "Khrushchev Lied," and his 2013 book "The Murder of Sergei Kirov."

Genres: History, Soviet History, Politics, Nonfiction, Russia, Soviet Union, Russian History

582 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2014

About the author

Grover Furr (Dr. Grover Carr Furr III) is an American professor of Medieval English literature at Montclair State University who is best known for his revisionist views regarding the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin.

He has researched and published extensive material on Soviet history (with an emphasis on the Stalin period) and on academic Sovietology from a critical perspective, for over four decades. Furr is a critic of anglophone and Western historiography of the USSR and of what he calls "the anti-Stalin paradigm" (a critique to which much of his bibliography attends).

Reviews

[Hatuxka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a masterful, almost line-by-line demolition/refutation of a mass-market-popular book on Stalin and the Soviet Union. The refutations are joined with replacing the lies, distortions and errors (with the "errors" inescapably of sheer, wanton negligence, since they are so repeated) with what actually happened as documented reliably in the scholarship of others. The author, Grover Furr, beginning most prominently with an earlier book Kruschev Lied, refuting the litany of lies told by Nikita Kruschev in his "secret speech", decided enough was enough and has embarked on a second career, beside being an accomplished historian of Medieval English literature, of systematically repudiating the vast cannon of accepted Anglo/US historical narrative of the USSR. What is interesting is how thoroughly dishonest the book that is being refuted is. Major assertions of the author of the book being examined are either shown to be without documentation of any kind, "documented" by distorting or mischaracterizing the source cited, or in innumerable instances when the author of the book Furr is refuting actually does cite a source in support of an assertion he makes, the cited authors themselves have provided no sources. And on and on. The western narratives on agricultural collectivization by the Soviet Union, the "Holomodor", the pact with Nazi Germany, "The Great Terror", the Katyn Forest massacre to name a few are all thoroughly debunked. Determine what historians have criticized this book and know they are highly untrustworthy.

[Alberto Martín de Hijas · Rating 1 out of 5]

A mixture of hearsay, cherrypicking and lies (Those murdered in the Moscow trials were all Hitler's agents, Stalin did not share Poland with Hitler, the Katyn massacre was the work of the Germans, the members of the Polish anti-fascist resistance were terrorists, etc...) that tries to articulate a discourse that ranges from genocide denialism to its shameless apology.

Those who like David Irving crap can enjoy this bullshit, the rest better avoid it.

[Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite sitll reading it, I think I can already say that this is one of the most interesting books about the subject of "Holodomor", especially to those who have already read "BloodLands" from Snyder, it gives precise information, and respective quoting, about each claim and also de-constructs claims and misconceptions that are often considered to be "absolut truth.

I highly recommend it, despite being a relatively "though" reading, it is due to its dedication to fact-check in oposition to the misconceptions, lies and fabrications that it disproves.

[Grant Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

On famine we know that Stalins activities exacerbated the situation in Ukraine to the point that it was significant. By this I mean that we pay little attention to the famines that came before it so if regular famines were an issue then the only variable that changed was Stalin and therefor he has an outsourced effect. It’s also worth mentioning that the Great Leap Forward in China took about 45 Million lives so there is precedent for what Stalin was trying to do royally fucking up and taking millions of lives. So this guys punching his communism card. Timothy Snyder is about as lefty as you can’t get he’s just not this nuts.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edit: After learning more about Furr I'm getting some doubts about his research, nothing concrete but idk. I'll leave the original review up below, and in the meantime I'll keep learning.

Extremely dense, and all the more virtuous for its density, this incredibly well-researched book has blown the lid off my perceptions of the Soviet Union. I don’t know a single piece of media that is a better debunking of anti-communist propaganda than this one in terms of its depth and breadth.

I think there are some points more based in conjecture that I’m not convinced on--for example Furr doesn’t address the idea that Ezhov (as well as the others) could have had his confessions forced out of him by torture, and if I’m being honest the wording of the confessions just sound kind of forced and made up, and also I'm really disturbed by how Furr really seems to think Stalin didn't commit a single crime--but still overall he objectively and factually debunks a lot of bullshit. Now are Furr’s perspectives biased by him being a communist? Of course. But guess what? Every historian's perspective is biased one way or another. And Gurr factually debunks or casts serious doubts on the claims of so-called historians like Timothy Snyder by actually going to the sources that Snyder himself cites!

In short, Timothy Snyder is a dishonest, incredibly corrupt incompetent who single handedly proves that it takes almost no actual intelligence or morals to teach at Yale or make best-selling historical works and wins lots of awards.

Highlights (only started counting halfway through the book but all of the stuff on the ‘Holodomor’ early on is very convincing): pg.252-254, p.264-265, p. 267-279, 283-288, all of chapter 7, all of chapter 8, all of chapter 10, p. 468-473, p. 513-525, and all of chapter 15 and the conclusion, which is a damning indictment of modern Soviet scholarship that everyone should read, particularly p. 535-541.

(I didn't read chapter 11 or 12 as they weren’t of interest to me and skimmed some other sections not of interest to me)

[George Kanakaris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Criticizing Timothy Snyder, I thought, what could this be about? And so I started reading this book.
From the start, I began to encounter curious trivialities and minimizations.
Meanwhile, I came across quotes from this writer like : '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 bullshit.' (from 2012).
'The Katyn murders were committed by Nazis, not Russia' (The Soviet Union admitted this in 1991, Russia in 2004).
In short , Stalin's murder of 50 to 60 Million people was a misunderstanding.
I stopped reading after a few chapters.Who is going to give me back this lost time?
Post-truth lies and ridiculous apologetics from a spreader of communist propaganda.
Avoid at all costs.

[Jimmy]

You don’t need to read this, it’s as simple as Snyder didn’t back up a thing he said. I have saved you 500 pages, still a great read if your curious

[Amar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Furr’s book certainly refutes Snyder’s claims, but as a book in itself, I cannot say that it is of the highest quality.

There are seven criticisms I have, some more minor, some more major:

1. The cover of the book is horrible. Seriously, optically, it makes the author look like some nut job self-publishing a book.

2. The book could have been collated much better. This issue of organization is recurring throughout the book. The failure in the organization of the book’s contents is most evident in the introduction. Just reading it for yourself should suffice as evidence as to that. It could have been organized under maybe 3 to 4 subsections. But instead, it has, like, 20. Completely unnecessary. Moreover, this issue of organization is apparent in chapter one, wherein, as a part of subsection “B. Collectivization caused the famine,” he began to track back and start arguing against the claims he already responded to in subsection “A. The Famine Itself Was Deliberate Murder.” (I give one example, but he does this numerous times throughout the book. If you establish a point in a previous section, just refer to it rather than arguing the point again with the same points and slightly different material. Just outline all of your points in the previous section, and then just refer to that section throughout the work. If Furr had done so, he could have cut down the book’s pages by probably a quarter of its present length.)

3. Inconsistent punctuation makes the author look less legitimate (see the punctuation of subsections A and B above).

4. Echoing the criticisms I outlined above about the book’s collation, so much unnecessary material could have been cut out. The introduction could probably be half its length. At the moment, with all its repetition and lack of organization, it sounds like a crazy person. As I made apparent at the beginning of this review, I do not think that the author is crazy. I think they, overall, did a pretty solid job responding to Snyder. My point, however, here, is that the book looks bad optically due to its poor editing. Furthermore, due to the repetition and craziness that seem apparent in the introduction, it is very easy to turn off many would-be readers.

5. Some parts are poorly argued. In point B of Chapter 1, for instance, he talks about a quote from Stalin in Churchill’s memoir “Hinge of Fate,” wherein Stalin recounts how collectivization was necessary to solve the famines Russia suffered prior to the Soviet Union’s efforts. Okay? So, what have you accomplished by citing the quote? If Snyder is making the argument that collectivization caused famines, then inserting a quote from Stalin himself discussing how famines used to exist and that collectivization aims at solving it does nothing to argue against that point. There are three key reasons for this: (i) it makes you look less credible and unbiased because you are literally citing the dude with which is being argued about, but also (ii) just because Stalin is trying to solve the famines through collectivization does not mean that it was successful in addressing such famines, as Snyder is arguing precisely against that very point. Finally, (iii) once again, as I have already iterated before, Furr, you literally already argued for the notion that famines already existed in Russia. That is your entire subsection A of Chapter 1: why in the world would you not just refer to that as evidence if you were trying to establish why collectivization came into being? You did not need to add a page worth of useless evidence about Stalin talking about why collectivization needed to happen. It once again stretched the length of the book and did nothing to argue your side, once again making your arguments look less legitimate.

6. The book contains numerous instances of typographical errors and poor wording that hurt the book’s legitimacy. See the following, located on page 126, “Kusnierz, 104-105 contains several reports about starvation. These reports contain nothing abojut and are therefore irrelevant to charges of ‘man-made famine’ and ‘deliberate starvation’.” Now, unless “abojut” is a word, I am going to guess that it’s a typographical error. Never mind the fact that just looking at the quote, one can very quickly find how weirdly it is phrased. This is yet another thing that could have been easily solved with a competent editor.

7. The rhetoric is okay at the beginning, but it gets very quickly annoying. It almost feels like a child waving their hands, begging to be noticed. Yes, we get it. He is lying or is misguided. No need to write an entire paragraph calling him, essentially, a charlatan every single time you find an issue. Just say it is false and explain why. The occasional rhetorical paragraph explaining how Snyder is a liar might be valuable; however, it is done so frequently that it becomes tasteless and only serves to reinforce the reader’s opposition toward Furr.

[Ashwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The daring and painstakingly researched book Grover Furr's Blood Lies questions one of the most significant historical narratives of the last few years (Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands).Whereas Snyder depicts Hitler and Stalin as similar despots, Furr methodically analyses Snyder's allegations regarding the Soviet Union and shows with copious citations to original sources, that a large portion of Snyder's narrative is predicated on misrepresentations, incorrect translations, and unsubstantiated claims.The book's systematic structure is one of its strongest points. Furr examines every significant assertion in Snyder's book line by line and compares it to the historical record. Furr's numerous citations from scholarly publications, archives, and primary sources in several languages will be appreciated by readers seeking thorough documentation. The method is unyielding: whenever Snyder makes an anti-Soviet assertion, Furr thoroughly considers whether it can be supported, and in each instance, he comes to the conclusion that the evidence suggests otherwise.
Blood Lies, according to Furr's admirers, provides a useful counterbalance to decades of Cold War era academia that all too frequently depended on rumours or politically driven interpretations. The book challenges readers' "common sense" presumptions about Stalin, the USSR, and the larger history of Eastern Europe, regardless of whether they agree with his conclusions in full. For people who appreciate intellectual rigour, it is especially important because Furr isn't hesitant to defy the status quo when the data supports it.
In the end, Blood Lies is an impassioned call for historical truth rather than merely defending Stalin or the Soviet Union. Furr's work emphasises how important it is for readers and academics to challenge conventional wisdom and prioritise facts over opinions. Blood Lies is an engaging and thought-provoking book for anybody interested in USSR history, memory politics, or the way history is used as a weapon in contemporary discourse.

[Chet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable scholarship of the sort unavailable anywhere else in any language. The US is very fortunate to have a scholar like Grover Furr in our institutions and we ignore him at our peril. Furr shows unequivocally through thorough primary source research that with the exception of a handful of scholars (literally you can count them on one hand), academic scholarship on the Stalin era of Soviet history is completely dishonest and unreliable. Our Cold War intellectual apparatus has built up a house of cards of complete lies. If you are at all curious about Soviet history and why Stalin has the reputation he does and whether he deserves that reputation, please read this book as soon as you can.

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evidence dismantling common narratives and lies surrounding the Stalin period of the Soviet Union, all backed by evidence from the relevant Soviet Archives which are provided in their original language aswell as translated. Brilliant work by professor Grover Furr

[Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring to read, but good debunking of Snyders book… although Furr got some stuff wrong