babyfinland posted:

uh grover furr comes across like a baby huey style retard in that though

its almost as if

HenryKrinkle posted:

Here are my comments on your Dutch friend's remarks.

"It is also useful to read the document produced by the Central Committee on the subject in 1956 (i.e. after Molotov c.s. were shoved out of power), where they did a more thorough analysis than K. had done in his speech, called 'On Overcoming the Cult of Personality and its Consequences'. Here the CC basically analyzed the reverse of the Furr thesis: outside pressures as well as the logic of industrialization in a very short time had let to a destruction of the 'party democracy' in the USSR, which then allowed Stalin to construct a cult of personality around himself... why do these documents, created with the agreement of the party itself mere years after Stalin's death, not count as 'proof'?"

I assume your friend is talking about the "Molotov Commission" report. I also assume he hasn't read it himself, because it has not been translated and your friend says he can't read Russian.

That report is published in _Reabilitatsiia. Kak Eto Bylo_. Vol. 2 (Moscow 2003), pp. 150-274. I have studied it, of course.

It does not "count as 'proof'" because it is not evidence. AT BEST it is a secondary source -- a study of the evidence.

But in fact it isn't that either, because there's no reference to the evidence, and that evidence is not available to check against the "conclusions" presented in the report.

There is a dishonest and tendentious discussion of it in Matthew Lenoe's very recent book _The Kirov Murder and Soviet History_ (Yale UP 2010), 575-605. Lenoe loves it because it concludes there was no conspiracy against Kirov. But Lenoe notes that it can't be trusted, since the people in charge of it (Molotov was NOT one of them) destroyed documents that didn't "fit" their preconceived conclusion, and concentrated on giving Khrushchev what he wanted -- which was to blame Stalin for everything.

But this is just an aside.To repeat: it isn't evidence because it is a series of fact-claims without evidence.

Your friend doesn't know what evidence is. Then he proceeds to lecture me (and you) about history!

"But if his sources prove so obviously what he claims, how come nobody else uses them?

This is a lie.

Moreover, it's illiterate. Lots and lots of scholars cite the very same sources I cite. Obviously your friend doesn't know any of them.

He's not the only one who knows Russian and has an interest in current-day writing on Soviet history. Fitzpatrick knows Russian, so do McDermott, Viola, and the whole current generation of Soviet historians in the West. On the other hand, I do not know Russian and can't verify at all what Furr is talking about, especially since Furr's sources are not corroborated anywhere else.

What does "Furr's sources are not corroborated anywhere else" mean? That nobody else uses them? That's a lie (see above).

Whatever it means, how can your friend possibly make this statement, since he doesn't read Russian?

Viola has been writing about collectivization for decades now, not about Trotsky at all. McDermott is a foaming-at-the-mouth anticommunist liar, a completely dishonest and unprincipled person.

So for all I know he might be quoting complete nutcases who write newspaper articles in some Russian tabloid. These sort of things are why we have peer review in academia, sharing of sources, referencing current literature on the subject, and so on; in other words, the accepted methods of historical science."

This is, to put it politely, nonsense.

The field of Soviet history does not function at all according to "the accepted methods of historical science." It is a completely dishonest field. It is ideologically anticommunist, period. No one who is not an anticommunist can teach in this area. Major questions, such as the Moscow Trials, are taken for granted -- they were "frameups", even though there is no evidence for such a thing.

Here's what Arch Getty says about this incredibly dishonest -- fraudulent, really -- field of study on his home page:

"It is a sad sign of the politicized Cold War origins and primitive development of Soviet studies that such concentration on factors other than Stalin's personality has been considered radical."
In fact it is much worse than this.

Virtually every well-known, well-respected mainstream historian of the Stalin period lies -- repeatedly, blatantly. Their colleagues NEVER call them on it. They cover for each other.

None of this would be tolerated in, say, American history -- where there's a good deal of apologetics too, but where phony evidence gets you in trouble. Not in Soviet history! There, phony evidence, and phonier "analysis" of that evidence, is everywhere, and gets you praise!

"Note he has written what presumably purports to be a serious work of historical research, some 160 pages long. What does his bibliography consist of? Some generic primary sources; some references to himself; a bunch of things he took quotations from; a couple of Russian sources that are unverifiable for the reasons mentioned above; and some Trotskyists he selectively quotes."

This is simply a lie. Moreover, a conscious lie, since your friend doesn't read Russian and can't know what some of the sources are or anything about those who wrote them.

In the bibliograrphy I cite not "a couple" but _many_ mainstream anticommunist historians. In 40+ citations I have TWO to my own work.

I cite the following Trotskyists: Van Heijenoort, Rogovin, Pierre Broue (four if you include Fel'shtinsky, but that is a work of scholarship, not a Trotskyist screed). Broue's article is heavily scholarly.

So what? But see the following section.

"In Furr's work, there is other than Getty not a single reference to any modern-day historian or historical work on the USSR.

This is a lie. Also, it is illiterate. Here are some of the "modern-day historians... on the USSR" that I cite in my bibliography: Cherushev, Coox, Iunge & Binner, Jansen & Petrov, Kantor, Khaustov and Samuel'son, Main, Pavliukov, Rogovin, Rokitianskii,

Your friend is both a liar and an ignorant person.

There is not a single discussion of how representative the endless quotations are. There is not a single discussion about the context of the quotations, what their value is, and why Furr thinks that we should take them as meaning what he thinks they mean.

This is a lie. Also, illiterate. Read the article! I have very, very long and detailed discussions of the context, problems of interpretation, methods of verification and cross-checking. I discuss questions of interpretation at great length.

Your friend either didn't read my article or has read it but thinks you haven't read it and can lie to you about it.

All of these things are absolutely essential in any serious historical work - anyone who presented what Furr did as a thesis in a History programme would fail. This shows to me that neither Furr nor his supporters understand what scientific history looks like... Mere quotation-mongering is just that, it's bad journalism, not history."

This is a lie. The opposite is true. See my comments above.

Your friend has either not read the article carefully, or believes you have not done so.

He is a liar, utterly dishonest, and incompetent. It's impossible to discuss anything with a person as dishonest as him.

Read my article yourself, Vlazzarano. Obviously you haven't done it. If you had, you could have written what I wrote here yourself, or most of it.

Get yourself another friend. This one is worse than worthless: dishonest, a faker.

Sincerely,

Grover Furr

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3373210&pagenumber=21&perpage=40#post385899151

noice

getfiscal posted:

babyfinland posted:

uh grover furr comes across like a baby huey style retard in that though

retarded... retarded good. grover furr comes across like a badass who tore mccaine a new one.

he got some good swipes at matthijs's pompous overstatements but then proceeded to launch into a big declaration of the vast conspiracy of anticommunism and bla bla bla and sounded like a mentally imbalanced shut-in announcing an everlasting love for aerith. i can see why you're partial to him though.

getfiscal posted:

yeah there's no vast anti-communist conspiracy. millions of tonnes of explosives were dropped on vietnam for no particular reason.

oh man are you gonna rake in the upvotes for that one

getfiscal posted:

academia: just a free discussion of ideas, sort of like a marketplace.

You're talking to people with dreams of being unremarkable petit-bourgeois academics. At least real academics have shame about what they do, wannabes here throw away any ideology for a chance at feeling important.

Grover Furr is 100% right. McCain may say ideology is a point of class struggle (because Marx does) but he obviously doesn't believe it. Anyone who believes Soviet scholarship in the Anglo-Saxon world is remotely close to reality belongs on an obscure blog posting things no one cares about.

babyhueypnewton posted:

getfiscal posted:

academia: just a free discussion of ideas, sort of like a marketplace.

babyhueypnewton posted:

babyfinland posted:

uh grover furr comes across like a baby huey style retard in that though

after your dating profile was posted I was hoping you'd go back into hiding for a while, the way you look and your personality are even more hilarious than I thought.

is it hilarious baby huey

tpaine posted:

i just hope you all never find MY dating profile...holy shit...

Not hard to find:
http://www.okcupid.com/profile/jack_reacher