Blood Lies:: The Evidence That Every Accusation Against Joseph Stalin And The Soviet Union In Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands Is False

In this large investigation, Grover Furr argues that Yale professor Timothy Snyder’s 2010 book Bloodlands does not contain any factual evidence that paints Stalin and the Soviet Union under him in a negative light. Analyzing every accusation and citation that Snyder uses, Furr determines that Snyder’s book serves less as a truthful historical account and more as a piece of anticommunist propaganda written by academia, or as Furr calls it: propaganda with footnotes. Since at least 2011, Furr has been conducting research into the Soviet Union in the 1930s; largely debunking the common accusations, misconceptions, and “truths” about how Stalin ran the country during that time and the supposed crimes that he committed. Thus, it has all culminated towards Blood Lies. Like most other books by Furr, the book is organized in a chronological order, with each chapter posting the lie in full (with sources attached towards the accusation), and Furr going through why it is incorrect. In Blood Lies, it goes through every accusation and chapter that discusses the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Some of these accusations that Snyder makes can be egregious. The most infamous of them is the Famine of 1932-1933, where Snyder uses Ukrainian Nazi sources and writings to attempt to convince the reader that the Famine was deliberate and not caused by bad weather and clumsy farming practices. Furr would debunk the source (funnily enough, Snyder sloppily cites his sources also, notably by misplacing page numbers or claiming contrary to what the source states) by going through what Snyder cites and counters the famine claims by citing experts on the subject, which is Tauger, Davies, and Wheatcroft. Another accusation is when Snyder cites Stalin’s comments on the Kulaks, which Furr points out that the comments were rather ironic and that Snyder cites Stalin’s speech three times from Ukrainian and Polish sources AND a secondary source. This would imply that Snyder does not know Russian or is hiding it with right-wing Polish and Ukrainian texts. Clearly Yale is representing the brightest minds of the United States… If the previous paragraph has implied some of the sources that Blood Lies uses, it is both primary and secondary resources. Primary sources being from the Russian archives themselves (along with some memoirs from the era if accessible, along with source criticism by Furr in regards to the memoir’s reliability) and secondary sources from what Snyder uses in his book or from research done by other academics who specialize on the Soviet Union in the 1930s. With all of this in mind, it is safe to say that Grover Furr is reliable and Blood Lies is an interesting read, although it can be dense and some conclusions can be considered a stretch. Like my previous review of Furr’s Khrushchev Lied, there is yet to be an honest criticism of any of Furr’s work, probably because it goes against the mainstream anticommunist academia. And because of that, any criticisms that can be made is not actual criticism and just name-calling. Furr is not a Stalin apologist (as two Amazon reviewers state, notice how there isn’t a verified purchase tag by their username), because Furr states in his introduction that he’s still trying to find a legitimate crime committed by Stalin. Blood Lies is definitely a good read and a great counter to Bloodlands and whatever anticommunist lie that comes from Yale and other (mostly American) publications. As I’ve been reading Furr’s works since some of his first publications, I too await an honest criticism of his works that don’t revolve around name-calling and “read Solzhenitsyn” (even though actual academics, anticommunists included, do not cite him as credible). Whether that day comes or not, Furr’s criticisms of academic anticommunism stands tall and proud.

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eye-opener

Professor Furr has done an admirable work. He has deeply investigated Snyder's allegations and shown why they are false, comparing them not only with new and different sources, but sometimes even with the sources used by Snyder himself.

This publication is an interesting comment and critique of Snyders publication. While the comments must be taken with a grain of salt (some of the autors prise of communists exploits are just ridicoulous, but this should not hide the well documented critics that are laid down in this book). The book is an eyeopener how different historical sources can be used and that some historical books are more fiction than anything else. For that matter, this is an interesting and well documented book