I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.
And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.
This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.
Here is a chapter dealing with the Katyn massacre from the book Blood Lies by Grover Furr.
The book itself is a point by point takedown of Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder (an anticommunist rewrite of history that tries to equivocate between Stalin and Hitler) mainly just by following the book’s own sources and finding none of them substantiate any of the claims made. I do recommend reading the whole of Blood Lies, but it is pretty long and the Katyn chapter should give you some idea of just how falsified the anticommunist orthodox narrative on the USSR is.
Coincidentally I was looking into this book just yesterday to decide if I should read it. I probably will. What are your thoughts on its quality? From what I read it sounds like the jury is still out its accuracy, even though it is effective at negating the western consensus anti-Stalin narratives, since he draws from primary sources.
I personally haven’t come across a specific reason to doubt Grover Furr’s truthfulness, but I have seen people express pretty strong opinions on it (but then again, that’s exactly what the anticommunist orthodoxy would demand). Of his works I’ve only read Blood Lies, but it’s kind of a special case because it’s debunking a specific book from the book’s own sources. So, even if you completely ignore every point Furr elaborates on with ‘outside’ sources, it still tears the communism=fascism narrative to shreds, and makes the point while doing so that Bloodlands is basically the pinnacle of anticommunist historiography.