Hey all! This podcast I listen to recently did an episode purporting to debunk myths about Stalin's legacy. While I'm sympathetic to the idea that Cold War propaganda has led to falsehoods becoming latent in Westerners' popular conception of history, and the show certainly seems thoroughly researched, I'm critical of some of the cited sources at face. For example, I've heard that Grover Furr's Kruschev Lied takes several logical leaps in order to bolster its glowing portrayal of Stalin. I'm planning to do some independent research, but I would be honored if any scholars of the Soviet Union or Ukraine would be interested in taking the time to listen to this and identify any historical inaccuracies or half-truths that jump out at you, or point me to any quality, relatively unbiased literature on these topics.
The segment on the Ukrainian famine is from 30:42 to 1:38:55, and the segment on the purges is from 1:38:55 to around 2:20:00.
NOTE: I'm aware that these are are hotly contested, ideologically fraught topics, but I'm not interested in having those kinds of ideological debates with strangers on Reddit. You're probably not going to convince me that capitalism is awesome by typing, but you might be able to change my views on this topic somewhat by making me aware of facts which I hadn't considered.
EDIT: Here is a link to said podcast; https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/joseph-mother-fucking-stain
Some of the specific claims in the episode which ran counter to my understanding of the history;
- The death toll of the Ukrainian famine was far below the often-cited 7.5mil, and death toll figures were intentionally inflated by anti-Communists in order to propagandize their political perspective.
- Portrayals of the Ukrainian famine as a genocide were largely propagated by William Randolph Hearst, who had ties with far-right political actors, and almost all publications making this connection can be traced back to his newspapers' reportage on the event; many photos published in Hearst's newspapers as documentation of the famine were actually from the Volga famine, or from World War I.
- Right wing Ukrainian nationalists actively attempted to sabotage Ukrainian harvests in order to make collectivization look like a failure.
- Zinoviev, Trotsky and his son Zedov actively participated in schemes to assassinate Stalin.
- Zinoviev's trial was lengthy and fair, and was confirmed as such by foreign observers.
- Excesses in the Purges were committed largely by local party officials, not infrequently by Trotsky sympathizers within the party to guide it in an increasingly violent and authoritarian direction, thereby alienating ordinary people from the party and pushing them towards resistance.
- Stalin and the Central Committee actively attempted to curb these excesses, and issued a statement a couple months into the process decrying them.
- Stalin was not anti-semitic because in the USSR anti-semitism was a crime, and there is no documentation of him saying or doing anti-semitic things.
Additionally, these are some of the books cited. I would be interested, if anyone's read them, what they thought about their accounts or analysis.
"Another View of Stalin" by Ludo Martins
"Fraud, Famine and Fascism" by Douglas Tottle
"Khrushchev Lied" by Grover Furr
"Class Struggles in the Soviet Union" by Charles Bettelheim
"Stalin" by Ian Grey
"Stalin" by Isaac Deutscher
"Origins of the Great Purges" by J. Arch Getty,
"Blackshirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti
Thanks everyone!
While you are waiting for a fresh answer, here are some previous ones to tide you over.
There is a FAQ page dedicated to the Holodomor, but most of the answers are around five years old. u/Mikedash links to two more recent answers which discuss whether it was a genocide and what the causes were.
For Grover Furr in particular, I think the most extensive discussion on r/AskHistorians is this thread, particularly the comments by u/fragmentedmachine, u/commiespaceinvader, and u//u/kieslowskifan (who also answers a previous question here linked).
The summary for the famine seems to be that it was caused by a "incompetence combined with both ambition, impatience, and local conditions" (re kieslowkifan), while the summary on Grover Furr is that he consistently misrepresents his sources.
EDIT: Also I'm not sure if you linked the podcast, since I'm not seeing it in your OP.
Hey there,
Could you please summarize the segments in question? Provide an overview of the narrative the podcast is telling? You're asking people to listen to almost two hours of audio and then spend 1-2 hours writing a response. I think you'll do a lot better if you just ask some questions about the specific topics you're interested in as history, not as "fact-checking a podcast". ;)