Grover Furr

Grover Carr Furr III (born April 3, 1944) is an American professor of Medieval English literature at Montclair State University, best known for his books on Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.[1]

Biography

Born in Washington, D.C., Grover Furr graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1965 with a BA in English. He received a Ph.D in Comparative literature from Princeton University in 1978.[2] Since February 1970 he has been on the faculty at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where he specializes in medieval English literature.[3]

Works, beliefs and reception

He is mostly known for his book Khrushchev Lied. The book attacked the speech given by Nikita Khrushchev, called On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, but more commonly referred to in the West as the "Secret Speech." It was positively reviewed in the Journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy by Sven-Eric Holmström, who declared it to be a valuable contribution to the "historical revisionist" school of Soviet and Communist studies.[4] In May 2014 he held a talk at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.[5] In a review of "Khruschev Lied", the Russian Orthodox weekly Russkii Vestnik described Furr's research as "objective" and "impressive."[6]

Grover Furr has been described by historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr as a historial revisionist author[7] who, according to Cathy Young, was "on a career-long quest to exonerate Stalin".[8] Furr believes that the Katyn massacre was not committed by the NKVD[9] based primarily on the discoveries in the mass graves at Volodymyr-Volyns'kiy, Ukraine and his book on this subject has been cited in Russia as confirmation that the revisionist views are also "supported by foreign historians".[10]

Furr has also received some negative attention from a number of American far-right media outlets. David Horowitz listed him as one of the "101 most dangerous academics in America", and criticizes him for believing that "it was morally wrong for the United States to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union", denying the Katyn massacre, Stalin's alleged antisemitism, and on a number of other historical issues.[11] Furr was also criticized by websites like FrontPage Magazine[12] and The Daily Caller[13] for a response he gave to a question on Stalin during a university debate: "I have spent many years researching this and similar questions and I have yet to find one crime that Stalin committed."

Bibliography

Books

Articles

References

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