Furr has also critiqued Stephen Kotkin’s book “Stalin: Waiting for Hitler” in a book called “Stalin: Waiting for the Truth”, and has a book titled “Khrushchev Lied”, which take the position that mainstream historians of Stalin are wrong to call him a mass murderer or blame his policies for the Ukraine famine. In particular, his critique of Stephen Kotkin’s book argues that every single “crime” committed by Stalin (as presented by Kotkin) didn’t occur.
Based off the books I’ve read about Stalin, Furr’s position seems ridiculous, but then again I’m not a historian. So I’m wondering, how have mainstream historians responded to Furr’s criticisms and how do they view his history books (in particular “Bloodlies”)?
Short answer:
Furr has some good archival material, but he's understood as a Stalinist polemic.
Discussion:
Furr is not an historian -- his PhD is in Comparative Literature, and his academic specialization is medieval English literature. He does speak Russian and does research in that language, but his intemperate tone is a good clue that there's something not quite right here. His works are published by a speciality publisher, "Erythros Press and Media" -- eg not anything with an academic editorial process. Erythros (which is Greek for "Red") is not just Marxist, its explicitly Stalinist, devoted like Furr to such topics as Trotsky's treason and the murder of Sergei Kirov. It's as though 1930s communist apologists were preserved in amber . . . they get a little more timely with their sympathy for Mao's Cultural Revolution.
We don't dismiss things out of hand because of where they're published, but it's fair to observe the company Furr keeps, and since the death of Enver Hoxha, he's keeping company with one of the last bands of true Stalinists. In that sense, he's historically valuable as "living history", even if he's not much for dispassionate analysis.
He's certain that anyone and everyone, from Nikita Krushchev to Timothy Snyder to Stephen Kotkin is "lying". And he puts "lying" right up there in the titles of his books. And that's not to mention all the other folks who must be lying, Robert Conquest, Robert Tucker, Sheila Fitzpatrick . . . Furr's list of "liars", from different times, countries, academic disciplines and political persuasions is a remarkably long one; people with good evidence are seldom so floridly furious. If you've got the facts on your side, you argue from them . . . if you don't, you pound the table and call your critics liars.
He is viewed as a crank, his works are generally not reviewed, when they are there is appreciation for some of his research, but little for his judgment:
More often than not, he fails in the logic of his argument, and rather than letting the evidence lead to a conclusion, it appears that the opposite approach has been taken.
Elich, Gregory. Science & Society, vol. 78, no. 3, 2014, pp. 398–401.
It is possible to find historians who are more sympathetic to Stalin -- Arch Getty at UCLA comes to mind-- without going to the extremes that Furr does. On the evidence, Furr's archival work is sometimes valuable but his historical reasoning is too transparently the result of political passion to be useful.