My father is a maoist who denies most soviet crimes against humanity. He is aware that Grover Furr isn't a part of academia, but still respects his conclusions. He studied Soviet history in university, and has read a lot of more mainstream historians as well. He especially respects Getty, and has studied "the road to terror" quite thoroughly.

To me, Grover Furr seems essentially like the soviet version of David Irving, but my dad argues that Grover Furr has a lot more thorough examination of his sources. He claims that if historians could refute Furr's arguments, they would have, in stead of ignoring him (he refrences historians response to David Irving).

I have tried to show him counter arguments to Furr on this sub, r/badhistory and on holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com. However, it seems he doesn't consider these websites as very serious, and has mostly not researched these counter arguments.

I have tried to make him read the review of Khrushchev Lies in science and society, but due to Gregory Elich not being a historian, he doesn't consider this very seriously either.

He has said he would change his mind if he was presented to information on why Grover Furr is wrong. He claims that all the criticism he has seen of Furr, either misrepresents his work, or is adressed in his work.

Is there any factual criticism out there of Grover Furr by historians specialized in soviet history? Or do any of you have any other tips on how to convince him he is wrong on Grover Furr?

How was the process organized? Where should I go? What should I do to prove that I am eligible and that I am not over my quota already? Are there bread lines and ration books?

I'm seeing a lot of contradictory information on the internet as to the formation of the Boyar social class and the Boyar Scion social class. It seems that the Boyars were responsible for gathering and training armed forces in much the way the leader of an English fiefdom would have been, but I'm not sure if that is correct.

At this time, did the word "druzhina" mean the entirety of the army, or only an elevated portion of it? Surely one boyar could produce enough soldiers to necessitate some sort of officer rank, but I can't find any clear information on that. I'm honestly not even sure how to find it, as much of what's available on the internet isn't in English and unfortunately that's the only language I speak.

Much of the history of Kievan Rus seems to be tied with mercenaries, would mercenaries still have been employed at this time?

I've messed around with archery a few times from compound bows to replicas of English longbows. I'm well aware there's a difference between effective range, target range, and maximum distance. A marked shot of 500+ yards seems absurd to me when a compound bow has a maximum range of around 100 yards. The longest aimed shot of an English longbow was recorded (according to Wikipedia) in the 16th century and was 345 yards. Surely this is a gross exaggeration? Has anyone come even remotely close using a replica? How would a Mongol bow compare to a Magyar bow, as they seem to have similar construction and were used in roughly this same time period (late 12th to early 13th century)?

British involvement in the Suez Crisis caused Eisenhower to threaten and then sell Pound bonds, damaging its economy severely and ending its reign as a global power.

British involvement in the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran was instead backed by the US.

Both had obvious British interests of reverting nationalization (the Canal in Egypt and the AIOC in Iran). Both were justified by British diplomats as being hotspots for Soviet communists. Even then, Egypt had more obvious ties to the Soviet Union than Iran. So why the difference?

Was it not highly lucrative for Indonesians to be involved in the spice trade? And if so, why didn't that practice spread to the Philippines given its similarity and climate and agricultural conditions? Were the Spaniards confused by this? Why wouldn't they just begin producing spices there as well?

Considering its success in the Philippines where Islam had already been present and all of South America, how come Indonesia remained mostly Muslim?

This is the part that makes the least sense to me about the Papacy having an actual country that isn't just to support it financially/secure it militarily. During the Renaissance for example Julius II got involved in the Italian Wars, with plenty of Catholic leaders and men on the opposing side. So what was to stop him from declaring his authority at that point, e.g. "You will all be excommunicated unless you stand down and meet my demands"? And sure, maybe the people at the top could have had their own doubts about that, but how would they justify that to the powers back home, especially their local clergy?

I am currently watching the show 'Ragnarok' on Netflix and it seems to me that their image of Thor & Loki is also heavily borrowed from the looks popularised by the MCU movies - i.e. Thor being big and stupid with long hair (usually blonde) while Loki is thin and tall with black hair. I tried to Google depictions of Thor & Loki and only found paintings from the 1800's which would have been heavily influenced by Christian thoughts.

Are there any original surviving depictions of Thor & Loki? Did they always look like this? I tried to search in AskHistorians sub but couldn't find anything.

I remember when I was growing up my view of history was very 'great man' ie: History was mostly determined by the actions of politically/militarily/economically powerful individuals. And I've always held on to this a little bit.

I mean yes, the title is sexist, but the basic premises seems sound to me. Take Nazi Germany and world war II, perhaps the most well documented event in history (or one of them).

Given that Nazi Germany was a fascist state which responded to a hierarchy, then doesn't that mean that if Hitler had of seen the light or had a massive change of heart (Maybe a vision from God, like Joan of Arc, or someone simply put LSD in his tea), then he, a single powerful individual, could have caused great changes, yes?

If Hitler said:

'No, we are not going to invade Poland, or Czechoslovak, or Austria,' then the Wermarcht would not have invaded those countries, hence no WWII.

'I order that the Jews not be exterminated' Then the Holocaust would not have happened. If Himmler or Heydrich were insistent on carrying it out, he could have had them shot.

So right there, we have one man who's actions caused (and I argue could have avoided) two of the most impact events in human history. I mean what would the modern Geo political map look like without WWII, and hence no rise of American and Russian military/industry. Sure, America was always a big player, but would Russia have ever become the world superpower?

And even if they did, the Cold War might never have happened if Germany hadn't been invaded and nearly destroyed by the Allies.

Couldn't the same be said of people like Ceaser, Hannibal, Elizabeth I, Napoleon, etc?

So how and why is great man theory wrong, aside from being more aptly called 'Great Person Theory?'

One of my professors told me it was because it glamorizes war because it focuses on war, but this seems a poor argument. I think I just gave good reasons for how WWII was immensely impact. That's not glamorization, that's truth.

Listening to a recent podcast, I heard that Kennedy wanted an early summit with the Soviet leader to show that the young president was willing to stand up to the Soviets, but the June 1961 meeting turned into a bit of a disaster for Kennedy, and may have led indirectly to Khrushchev's placement of missiles in Cuba.

What happened during the summit, and how did both sides respond over the next year or so leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis?

From what I can see through research, it appears that Sin Eaters were a part of society in England and Wales from the 17th to early 20th centuries. Did this practice immigrate to the United States, and if so, was it practiced in Colonial New York, Long Island, and New England? Theoretically in early 1700s New York, would this still be practiced?

I've always been curious about this as the justifications I've read for claiming that the Byzantine Empire was no longer Roman always seemed a bit thin - most recently I read in Imperial Tragedy, From Constantine’s Empire to the Destruction of Roman Italy AD 363-568 by Michael Kulikowski where he argues the transition to something decidedly not Roman took place at the end of Justinian's reign as the governmental structure of the empire had changed radically from its former incarnation, but it ignores the fact that the people living in the Empire at that time would almost certainly identify as Roman and not something else.

Of course the date of this contruct of non-Romanness can and will be debated forever but I'm more interested in how and why historians often make such an effort to point out the transition at all. After all, we know from many sources that for many centuries after the end of the western Empire its continuation in the East considered itself the Roman Empire and that anyone else who did so was a pretender. Even if they spoke Greek and worshipped the Christian god they still considered themselves as Romans and I would assume that needs to be taken into account.

So the crux of my question is: When did Rome stop being Roman, and how do we make that distinction when the people living at the time would likely have never even considered the concept of it? After the peace with the Sabines? After Hannibal? Augustus? When Aurelian stitched the empire back together? Constantine? The list could go on and on of course but I'm very curious about this and thank anyone who responds!

I mainly ask as Hungarians like to cite "thousand year old borders" including Croatia, but Croatia was a personal union, not an annexation.

I understand that many languages have many things in common and that the effect of trade, religious spread, and politics/war would motivate people to learn the languages of the peoples that they are dealing with. What I am really curious about is how people actually learned new languages when they had no medium to speak between, no common language, and no languages with large similarities.

Was there more often than not a common language for people to use together, and then use that language to learn each others native language?

A lot of people from both political sides seem to trash this book for some reason. Never understood why and can't find an explanation.

Japanese uses a lot of hard consonants compared to a language like Korean, and it just sounds very different. A pure syllabary would never work in a language like Korean, as elegant of a writing system as Hangul is. But it works fine for Japanese. When and how did these languages diverge so much?
Like one could say it is because they are more isolated because they are an island; but so is Britain, and English and German still share a lot more similarities than Japanese and most other East Asian languages.
And it also isn't exactly like there wasn't a lot of cultural exchange happening with China, considering that Kanji are just Chinese characters that the Japanese adopted.

Like how did they know he was Perkin Warbeck from Flanders and the information on his parents. Did he tell them who he was when he confessed/before he was executed or is this something historians found out later?

I’ve been looking at books about Marco Polo and the texts get longer and longer as the centuries have progressed. It seems authors have added to his narrative and when you look at the original story, there are large holes in his account. What evidence do we have that he actually went to China and the Mongol court? Was it as extensive as he claimed?

Edit: For example, Marco Polo claimed the Mongols made him a Governor of the Chinese city of Yangzhou which he oversaw for 3 years. There is no evidence of this occurring in any documents in Yangzhou or in China. Nothing