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?
Hello, I'm the author of those articles at HC. Since then I've published a long article in Russian about Katyn denial, in which I debunk the core denialist arguments, including those by Furr (because 95% of what he says about Katyn has been said before him):
http://katynfiles.com/content/romanov-katyn-antikatyn.html
Note that it's been published on paper, in a book by the official Russian Military-Historical Society.
Yes, it's in Russian, but nowadays such texts can be translated from inside a browser. (Later I'll translate it to English.)
Since your dad seems to respect sources of arguments more than the arguments themselves, there's no reason for me to go into detail about Furr's failures here, since my arguments will be ignored, given how it's just a reddit comment.
But your dad should be consistent. Furr is not a historian, so his arguments should be ignored by that logic. Furr is an absolute Stalin fanatic, who literally said he was unable to find a single crime by Stalin:
So, once again, this should disqualify him.
If it doesn't in your dad's eyes, then he's not consistent, and no argument can defeat the lack of consistency.