Talk:On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences/Archive 1

Grover Furr

Grover Furr is an extreme leftist professor, I'd say, Stalinist. However I have read his book and I would say that it has merits, even if for the sole reason that it presents historical documents and facts. Khrushchev himself was not an angel: he was of best communist breed both during Stalin times and during his own rule. And I see nothing unusual that he bent the truth to make it fit his goals (however noble they may be seen, or not), as most of communist rulers did. This book created some noise both in Russia and America and I'd rather on the side of keeping it mentioned here. Any other opinions ? - Altenmann >t 16:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Find a review of Grover Furr's work in a credible peer-reviewed history journal that is positive and we can include Furr's work. Scholar shows nine hits for "Grover Furr" Stalin, none reviews of his work.Fifelfoo (talk) 01:25, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, Furr's webpage adequately details his reviews in English, none of which I find credible Fifelfoo (talk) 01:29, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

To add to what I posted below, I don't mind a mention of it if there are reliable sources concerning the supposed stir the book created in the US and Russia. The guy who wants to post this, Sq178pv, gives me the first impression of a diehard Stalin apologist, and the paragraph he wants in there is anything but NPOV. He wants to cite the book as some sort of irrefutable proof that the speech was nothing but a pack of lies. Lack of refutation may mean nobody can answer you, but it also may mean nobody takes you seriously. If the latter, the author does not belong in Wikipedia per Wikipedia's philosophy, regardless of whether what he says is true. Mbarbier (talk) 01:40, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Hah! Been doing a little more Internet research. I have reason to believe Furr himself is Sq178pv. Check out this page, pay careful attention: http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/PNEWS-L/message/12101?var=1 I mean sure, this could be total coincidence. Mbarbier (talk) 03:08, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I just deleted a reference to this added in November 2011. I have not read the book but perused some of Furr's other writings on the Internet, and the tone struck me as more polemic than scholarly. I then found this talk page and decided to delete it, seeing that this issue has been raised in the past and that it seems there is either no consensus or the consensus is against Furr.

To reveal my own hand of biases, I became interested in this because Khrushchev's speech was mentioned as influential on Robert C. Tucker in his Memoir of a Stalin Biographer, which can be found here: http://plaza.ufl.edu/bjparis/ikhs/essays/tucker_stalin.html . Tucker was apparently inspired by Karen Horney's Neurosis and Human Growth, of which I am a fan myself and which led me (rather indirectly) to the memoir. Horney's is a book I can easily see providing insights into something like this, and I have ordered Tucker's biographies since reading the memoir. Mbarbier (talk) 16:56, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I reinserted the reference to Furr's book because it is indeed a scholarly work. So, for that matter, are many of Furr's other essays on the USSR, which are linked on his Home Page: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr . The Russian edition of Furr's book has been out since 2007. In it, and in the English edition, Furr claims that he has identified 61 separate "revelations" about either Stalin or, in a few cases, Beria, that Khrushchev made in the "Secret Speech" and that he has proven 60 of them to be false. This, of course, changes entirely the way one should regard Khrushchev's Speech.

In his recent book on the Kirov murder Matthew Lenoe shows convincingly that Khrushchev's men falsified their investigation of the Kirov murder (one of the "revelations" in the Secret Speech) in order to try to prove that "Stalin did it", even destroying documents which, evidently, they found inconvenient.

In short, no one claims that Furr is incorrect. No one defends the truth of any of Khrushchev's "revelations."

In the essay cited by Mbarbier above Tucker gets virtually everything wrong. Tucker misstates the date of the "torture telegram" and distorts what it says. Tucker says that Ordzhonikidze "was forced by Stalin to commit suicide" -- an absurdity for which there never has been any evidence, and which no scholar, no matter how "anti-Stalin", believes today. Even the so-called "fact" of O's suicide has been disproven -- yet another Khrushchev-era falsehood (see discussion in Furr's book, pp. 114-116 and the footnotes there).

Given the scholarly nature of Furr's study, heavily documented from primary sources, and the lack of any refutation or even disagreement with his results, the paragraph should stand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sq178pv (talk • contribs) 13:51, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I would support including a reference to your book in its own section at the bottom of the article. In light of how new this research is, combined with how little mainstream coverage it has had, in my opinion it still does not belong with a large paragraph in the introduction of the article implying that it is established academic fact that the speech was almost entirely composed of fabrications. To me, lack of refutation of a book published in the 21st century by an obscure author speaks more to non-notability than to the strength of the evidence. If you want to stick it in a section entitled "Alternative views" and let any interested readers look into it of their own volition, I would support the inclusion. Mbarbier (talk) 16:12, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

With edits like that I can see a problem here... All right, I removed this thing. At the very least, one must explain what "lies" by Khrushev exactly, per RS. My very best wishes (talk) 19:30, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

The review (and the excerpt I quoted) already explains that the author considers every point made in Khrushchev's speech to be a "lie." There's no need to make a gigantic section on the book detailing why he considers each claim to be false, is there? --Ismail (talk) 20:48, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

You Funny Jews

"As it happened, Grayevsky, who was Jewish, and had made a recent trip to Israel to visit his sick father, decided to emigrate there. After he read the speech, he decided to take it to the Israeli Embassy and gave it to Yaakov Barmor who had helped Grayevsky make his trip to visit Grayevsky's sick father. Barmor was a Shin Bet representative; he photographed the document and sent the photographs to Israel.[10][11]"

Can you please provide more background information? The idea that someone just "happened" to pass over secret documents is very juvenile. Clearly this guy had dual loyalty and eventually chose the one strongest to his heart. Even though he didn't technically defect his actions here are pretty clear on what his intent was. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.38.147.123 (talk) 06:16, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The views about Stalin from late Soviet Union ledders

After Khrushchev's fall from power,Stain got some praises by Leonid Brezhnev.In May 1965, Leonid Brezhnev publicly praised Stalin as a war leader. And in September, the secret police arrested the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel for "the crime" of publishing their novels abroad under pseudonyms. Suddenly, hundreds of leading Soviet intellectuals, writers,artists, and scientists began to send petitions to the party leadership with appeals to free the arrested writers and to stop the backslide to neo-Stalinism. A new movement was born, which demanded public trials and constitutional rights."Dissidents," as the members of this movement came to be called, began to appeal to the world via the foreign media.The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 substantiated the fears of the Soviet anti-Stalinist intelligentsia that the post-Khrushchev leadership might take the country in a neo-Stalinist direction. The crushing of the Prague Spring and its "socialism with a human face" dashed the hopes ofmany educated Soviet patriots that the existing system could be reformed. This produced a remarkable rise of antigovernment sentiment, even among some who were establish in the Soviet elites.Brezhnev praised Joseph Stalin's reign, but refrained from the brutality that Stalin was known for.Brezhnev admissioned "Stalin's serious mistakes about the Cult of personality to himself in his old ages".People's Republic of China (under Mao Zedong) and Albania (under Enver Hoxha) still condemned Brezhnev as Khrushchev as a revisionist,until Deng Xiaoping and Ramiz Alia wield power in the 1980s.

On November 2, 1987,Mikhail Gorbachev said that Stalin knowingly committed "real crimes" against the Soviet people."The guilt of Stalin and his immediate entourage . . . of wholesale repressive measures and acts of lawlessness is enormous and unforgivable," he told an audience of 6,000 Communist Party officials, foreign leaders and veterans of the Bolshevik Revolution. "This is a lesson for all generations." Former leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev also came in for stern criticism in Gorbachev's three-hour speech at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. It was the opening event of the Communist Party's week-long celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.A "truthful analysis" of history, Gorbachev said, was essential to the success of perestroika, his attempt to radically restructure Soviet society. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NVRENGUANNANREN (talk • contribs) 13:02, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

New investigation

A new investigation of the Grajewski story rather blows it apart. I don't want to edit this article, but feel free to ask me for the article (via the email link on my home page) if you can't get past the paywall yourself. Zero^talk 13:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)