Superb analysis and demolition of the claims in Timothy Snyders book Bloodlands By William Podmore - October 1, 2014 In this extraordinary book, Professor Grover Furr analyses ‘Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin’, by Timothy Snyder, a professor of Eastern European history at Yale University. Furr points out, “From its inception as an academic discipline the primary function of Soviet studies has been to provide a fount of anticommunist propaganda propped up by scholarship or the appearance of it.” He proves that Snyder’s book is indeed anti-communist propaganda propped up by the appearance of scholarship. He shows how Snyder misuses his sources, often citing sources that say nothing about what he claims they support. Over and again, Furr punctures myths about Soviet history, myths that Snyder repeats. For example, Furr notes that the Russian state has allowed nobody to read the transcript of the 1937 trial of Tukhachevsky and seven other generals since Colonel Viktor Alksnis read it in 1991. Until Alksnis read it, he believed the generals had been framed. After he read it, he concluded that they were guilty. On the purges of 1937-38, Snyder repeats the claim that the Soviet government was responsible. But Furr cites the conclusion drawn by V.N. Khaustov, an anti-communist historian: “Stalin made his decisions on the basis of confessions that were the result of the inventions of certain employees of the organs of state security. Stalin’s reactions attest to the fact that he took these confessions completely seriously.” Furr comments, “Khaustov admits the existence of a major conspiracy by Ezhov and concedes that Stalin was deceived by him. Ezhov admits as much in the confessions of his that we now have. Khaustov admits that Stalin acted in good faith on the basis of evidence presented to him by Ezhov, much of which must have been false.” Furr notes, “no one holds a government morally responsible for illegal crimes and atrocities committed by government officials unless the government discovers those crimes and yet refuses to punish the perpetrators. The Stalin government did vigorously pursue, investigate, prosecute, and punish Ezhov and the NKVD men under him who were responsible for these atrocities.” On the vexed issue of the Soviet non-aggression pact with Germany, Snyder repeats the Nazi lie that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany allied to attack Poland. Furr points out that the pact would have preserved an independent Polish state if the Polish government had not abandoned the country and its inhabitants to the Nazis. All through the 1930s, the Polish government rejected collective security, yet it also rejected Hitler’s demands. It lost the war in two weeks, then fled Poland, and, uniquely in World War Two, appointed no successor government, leaving the Polish people defenceless. When Soviet forces occupied Eastern Poland from 17 September 1939, the Polish government did not declare war on the Soviet Union. (It had declared war on Germany when it invaded on 1 September.) The Polish Supreme Commander Rydz-Smigly ordered his troops not to fight the Soviet forces, but ordered them to continue to fight the German invaders. Rumania and France both had military treaties with Poland, but neither declared war on the Soviet Union. The League of Nations did not determine that the Soviet Union had invaded a member state. Article 16 of the League’s Covenant required members to take sanctions against any member who ‘resorted to war’. But no country took sanctions against the Soviet Union, none broke off diplomatic relations. All countries, including Poland’s allies Britain and France, agreed that the Soviet Union was neutral. Snyder assumes Soviet guilt for the killings at Katyn. Furr observes, “German shell casings were found in these mass graves. The official German report contains photographs of the shell casings. In a telling omission, these photographs are side views of these casings. There are no photographs of the ‘head-stamps’ or ends where the percussion cap and identifying marks are located. Most German bullets of the era had date stamps, just as most of those found at Volodymyr-Volyns’kiy did. If any of those had been stamped 1940 or earlier the Germans would surely have photographed them, since they would have been excellent proof of Soviet guilt. The fact that they did not suggests that the head-stamps contained numbers or codes indicating manufacture in 1941. This is consistent with the other circumstantial evidence now available that points strongly to German, not Soviet, guilt.” He sums up the debate on Katyn: “all the evidence we now have suggests that the Germans and Ukrainian Nationalists, not the Soviets, shot the Polish officers whose corpses the Germans exhumed at Katyn in April-June 1943.” Again, Snyder assumes that Stalin was paranoid when he acted against a doctors’ plot. Furr points out that a doctors’ plot did indeed kill Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov. Zhdanov’s doctor, V. N. Vinogradov, wrote, “it must be admitted that A. A. Zhdanov did have a heart attack and the denial of this fact by myself, professors Vasilenko and Egorov, and doctors Maiorov and Karpai was a mistake on our part.“ He acknowledged, “I made a mistake in diagnosis which led to serious consequences and then to his death.” Furr comments, “If medical doctors in the United States today were to make such an admission they would certainly be stripped of their licenses to practice medicine and face criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.” Snyder tries to prove that Stalin was an anti-Semite. But to do this, he has to misquote Stalin as saying, “Every Jew is a nationalist and an agent of American intelligence” when Stalin actually said, “Every Jewish nationalist is an agent of American intelligence.” Furr cites Benjamin Pinkus, Professor of Jewish History at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel, who wrote of the Soviet government’s anti-cosmopolitanism campaign in the early 1950s, “It is important to emphasise that in these attacks there was no anti-Jewish tone, either explicitly or implicitly.” Furr sums up, “Not one of the crimes alleged by Snyder against Stalin and the Soviet leadership is genuine. All are fabrications. Snyder was unable to find a single example – not even one – of a ‘crime’ that really was committed by Stalin and/or the Soviet leadership. The implications of this fact should be considered. … the fact that the combined efforts of all the anticommunist, anti-Stalinist researchers in the world over a period of more than 70 years – ‘all the King’s horses and all the King’s men’ – and with the facilities of all the world’s best libraries and archives, have not been able to come up with a single, genuine ‘crime of Stalin’ of the period 1932-1945 – this is a fact that is worthy of attention. It is strong evidence in support of the negative conclusion: that there were no such ‘crimes of Stalin’. For if there were any such crimes, surely these highly motivated and well-provisioned anticommunist researchers, with unprecedented and privileged access to the archives, would have found them by now.” Furr notes the war crimes committed by US forces in Korea and Vietnam, and concludes, “The list of horrors committed by Western anticommunist nations could be greatly lengthened. One can understand why, therefore, it is important that enemies of the communist movement – who are at the same time defenders of Western imperialism and its crimes – find it so important to fabricate ‘crimes of Stalinism’.”
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 05:14:46 +0000
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