There are genuine academic critiques to be made of some of Furr’s work. “He made me learn America bad” and “he made me learn about pirates and communism” aren’t them.
Yes. J Arch Getty - a legit Soviet historian who is a lib but is still very fair to Stalin IMO and generally very USSR-friendly - once said that Furr understands the material in the archives, but he just comes to really weird conclusions.
I think Furr is fine as long as you know you’re getting an apologist more than a historian. There’s a place for that. Furr himself admittedly (on the Proles pod) he thinks Stalin did nothing wrong. If you approach history from that angle you’re going to have blind spots. IMO skip Furr and go to Losurdo.
There are genuine academic critiques to be made of some of Furr’s work. “He made me learn America bad” and “he made me learn about pirates and communism” aren’t them.
Yes. J Arch Getty - a legit Soviet historian who is a lib but is still very fair to Stalin IMO and generally very USSR-friendly - once said that Furr understands the material in the archives, but he just comes to really weird conclusions.
I think Furr is fine as long as you know you’re getting an apologist more than a historian. There’s a place for that. Furr himself admittedly (on the Proles pod) he thinks Stalin did nothing wrong. If you approach history from that angle you’re going to have blind spots. IMO skip Furr and go to Losurdo.