I discovered this work on ProleWiki while debating a friend of mine about the purges under Stalin and was immediately disappointed with the quality of the work. It is an extremely sloppy and downright amateurish work; not something I would expect to be published, much less cited. The purpose of this post is to try and go over the many glaring issues I find with how it was written and composed and to some extent some of the conclusions it draws.
The other chapters contain confirmatory evidence, with careful and appropriate analysis. They are important, because dishonest historians will claim that Tukhachevsky et al. were not guilty; rather that they were "framed." They will further claim that Leon Trotsky, who is deeply implicated in the Military Conspiracy, was also "framed." These claims are demonstrably false. This book presents the evidence. So these chapters are important.
Before even getting into the meat of the text we encounter this section from the Foreword. Already, before even seeing the "evidence", Furr is telling us it is true and that arguments to the contrary are inherently false and the people making them are lying.
This is not how you make your case in an argument. Furr is presenting his conclusion before presenting the evidence when he should be doing the opposite: present the evidence - then make your conclusion. You do this so that the other person can follow your line of reasoning based on what is presented, rather than dismissing you outright simply because of your claim. This is basic argumentative logic and I'm actually astonished he made such a critical error and that none of the other people who worked with him corrected it. You expect to see this in Internet arguments - hell, even I do it sometimes without thinking - but he had time to work on this book and so could've avoided this pitfall easily. Furr's appeal for readers to be objective is utterly pointless since he's already told them what to believe before they've seen anything. This is the easiest way to get someone to dismiss the work without reading it just by the conclusion it has drawn being presented when the reader knows nothing about what is behind that conclusion. When dealing with something this controversial and delicate you kind of have to assume that the reader may need to be convinced and won't be objective right off the bat; to do so is to potentially drive them to put the book down.
A far better way to start would be to question the enduring narrative by asking if the evidence supports the mainstream conclusion, then present the evidence and analyze it. Furr doesn't do this. He tells the reader their information is wrong, the people who gave it them are lying, and that he knows the truth. This is textbook manipulation; not education. He isn't making a case but dictating interpretation. This would be bad enough on its own but in the Introduction he can't stop himself from doubling down on this awful strategy. He spends the entirety of Chapters 1, 3, and 4 doing this as well. Again: the book has barely started, the reader has not yet been present much evidence for Furr's conclusions, and is already being told they've been lied to, that any initial beliefs they had were wrong, etc. This is terrible argumentation. This kind of stuff should be at the end of the book in the conclusion section; not the beginning.
In the "What Happened" section of the Introduction he presents the NYT article without actually presenting the text of the article, simply showing the headers and subheaders. I don't know why he didn't include the full text; he seems to believe the article was relevant to his argument so why not include the whole thing? He argues here that the "guilt of the defenders was widely doubted"; yet none of the headers nor subheaders imply anything of the sort - they simply cite that arrests have occurred. If the text of the article itself is presuming innocence then why not present that text? He apparently had access to the article if he can quote the headers and subheaders; yet he did not, while implying the article itself assumes innocence when the headers/subheaders don't imply this at all. This seems like relevant information he is leaving out for some reason. What's more is treats presumption of innocence as an inherently bad thing, which is simply crazy. The whole concept of a "fair trial" is built on the idea that guilt must be proven. This is what makes the trial "fair" in the first place. The single greatest critique of modern judiciary systems is they often don't even try to prove guilt in the first place so suggesting that presuming innocence is bad is an utterly bewildering take. And yes, he is implying it's a bad thing here as he follows up this claim by presenting Trotsky predicting Stalin's downfall and then immediately claiming Trotsky was lying. The first issue with this is that it isn't clear where this quote is coming from; is it part of the NYT article? Because it's the only header/subheader separated from the rest. If not where is it coming from? This issue is easy to remedy: just publish the full text of the article, which Furr doesn't do. The second issue with this part of the text is that he says Trotsky is lying when he wasn't. Trotsky was offering his perspective. That perspective may be flawed or inaccurate but that's not the same as lying. He argues that Trotsky is lying because Trotsky was behind the conspiracy but, again, he is making this claim without having presented any evidence yet. We, the reader, are under no obligation to take his claim at face value when he has yet to present his case for it. From our perspective Trotsky isn't lying as Furr hasn't proven Trotsky's involvement yet. This is why it's important to present evidence first before drawing conclusions.
Furr then goes over the process of acquiring the Trial Transcript but, bizarrely, doesn't bother to present the transcript immediately after. This is a strange choice to me since that seems to be the next logical conclusion.
Instead Furr has a section titled "Other Arrests and Trials of Military Men" which reads like something that should have been presented earlier in the book as it crucially mentions at the end how there is little modern research into the Tukhachevsky Affair. This would've been better placed earlier in the book and would have made a more compelling introduction to the book's central thesis by revisiting this affair and comparing the evidence we have with the conclusions already drawn. This way it reads less like propaganda and more like a proper work of history that aims to educate the audience and challenge their perception of historical events rather than telling them what to believe and accuse others of lying. Yet, confusingly, Furr places this section in the middle of the discussion about the transcript where it feels completely out of place. The first paragraph is particularly objectionable:
The trial transcript makes it clear that many other officers were involved in this conspiracy. Today there is a massive amount of evidence to this effect – so much, indeed, that a multi-volume set would be needed to contain it all. We will cover a very small part of this evidence in some of the chapters in this book.
Here he is again making a claim without having presented the evidence. He talks about that evidence and yet, again, we the reader haven't seen it yet. Already it feels like I'm wasting my time with this guy; he keeps telling me the other historians are wrong and that the evidence proves it but he is refusing to actually show me the evidence. Stuff like this drives readers away; it does not hook them in. It feels like an old man yelling at a cloud and not a serious historian doing serious historical research. This damages the work as a whole as well as Furr's arguments by creating a negative feeling toward them. Where is the evidence he keeps talking about? Why is he not showing it? It starts to feel like he's hiding something and casts doubt in the reader's mind that he actually knows what he's talking about.
He then presents an entire screed of how Stalin was framed, how it was all Trotsky's (and Khrushchev's) fault, and how everything we know about Stalin is a lie and I feel the urge to bang my head against the wall.
REMINDER THAT THIS IS THE SECTION THAT IS SUPPOSED TO DISCUSS THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE TUKHACHEVSKY TRIAL - NONE OF THIS IS REMOTELY RELEVANT AND WE STILL HAVEN'T SEEN THE TRANSCRIPT YET.
It doesn't matter how "objective" you try to be here - and I'm beginning to wonder if Furr actually knows what this word means - no one is going to go through this and think he's not batshit crazy. This is just a pro-Stalin rant. It doesn't even belong in this section of the book. Hell, much of it doesn't even belong in the book at all. The book is supposed to be about the Tukhachevsky Affair and Trotsky's involvement in it; not Stalin's legacy. That's an entirely separate point of discussion of which the Tukhachevsky Affair is only a smell piece in a wider puzzle. If you want to challenge the reader to re-think their view of Stalin you need to wait to the conclusion at the end of the book, after they've absorbed all the evidence you've presented (which we still haven't seen!). And even then it should be limited primarily to the Tukhachevsky Affair since that is the topic at hand, not fucking Khrushchev's Secret Speech or Mikhail Gorbachev. Furr is just rambling incoherently throughout this section and its destroying his own credibility before his evidence has even been viewed. He keeps talking about how Stalin's enemies have no evidence - yet so far we haven't seen his!
Furr then decides to talk about his research into the Tukhachevsky Affair. This is yet another thing that should've been placed earlier in the book; especially since it plants the seeds that traditional historians may have been wrong by specifically citing Robert Conquest and his work, The Great Terror, by name. He even discusses the inherent anti-communist bias in academia. Like, this is actually a good section and would have made previous points in the book stronger had he placed it earlier in the pecking order but for some unknown reason he placed it here after a pro-Stalin rant and before the actual transcript of the trial itself. Just an overall baffling choice.
For some confounding reason Furr still has yet to present the Trial Transcript. The section title "The Trial Transcript" is deceptively named and is really just him ranting again, accusing others of lying and faking evidence, etc. We have yet to be given a reason to take him at his word. If anything it appears more likely that he's trying to aggressively plant the seeds of doubt into our minds not by using subtext (which as we all know is for cowards!) but by straight up telling us that our conclusions are wrong, that he is right, that he knows the truth, and that we need to listen to him. Honestly at this point in the book you're not going to have an objective view on anything no matter how often Furr tries to appeal to objectivity. Furr has had every opportunity to try and persuade the reader and has categorically failed to do so. If this is the quality of work he's putting out then I am weary of ever trying to parse through Khrushchev Lied because so far the only thing Furr has proven is that he doesn't know how to make an argument and can't stop himself from going on wild rants. This man was in his seventies when he wrote this book and he was making arguments like a grade schooler. How am I supposed to take his claims seriously? Especially when I haven't seen the evidence? He's destroying his own arguments and the credibility of his research like this. He could very well still be correct about everything (if we ever see that evidence he keeps talking about but never shows!) but the way he is presenting his research and arguments is so careless that if I were a professor at a prestigious college and a student turned this in as their thesis I would fail them before even getting to the first chapter and then tell them to their face to never write again.
Chapter 1 continues with Furr's seemingly endless errors. We still haven't seen the Trial Transcript we've been promised. Instead Furr decides to spend time on the Shvernik Report from the Khrushchev Era. He insists this is relevant but it takes several paragraphs for anything remotely relevant to the Tukahchevsky Trial to crop up. By the time we get to that relevant material we're smacked in the face with this absolute fucking gem of a line:
Here we will focus on lies of omission in the Spravka about the Tukhachevsky Trial transcript. The Spravka reproduces sentences taken out of context in order to argue that the defendants were innocent.
MY BROTHER IN MARX, WE HAVE NOT EVEN SEEN THE TRANSCRIPT ITSELF YET AND YOU ARE ALREADY TRYING TO ARGUE THAT THE SHVERNIK REPORT IS TAKING IT OUT OF CONTEXT.
Any discussion on the Shvernik Report (and only the relevant parts, since this book isn't about the fucking Shvernik Report or Nikita Khrushchev) should have come after presenting the core transcript of the trial has been shown to the reader. I feel like I'm rewatching Mike Pence in the 2020 Veep debate dodge questions like a fighter pilot dodges missiles the way Furr continues to dodge the trial transcript he keeps teasing but refuses to expose. This is the intellectual equivalent of blue balling.
Now, to Furr's credit, he does actually provide the context the Shvernik Report left out here. It's totally out of place as again an analysis of the Shvernik Report should have come after the trial transcript but at least it is here. We're finally seeing the "evidence" he's been harping on about. He is correct here that they omitted the context and presented Yakir's & Uborevich's trial answers in a dishonest framing. But this is like the bare minimum he needed to do so I'm not giving him points for that after he's done so much to sabotage his own credibility. This is the stuff we should've been getting into from the beginning of the novel; not all those rants about Khrushchev and Trotsky and how every other historian is lying. Even so this isn't the transcript itself, which is what we've been waiting for all this time.
In Chapter 2 Furr begins arguing that the defendants' confessions were genuine. I really think citing the full transcripts work better than the cherrypicking he does with them. He's combing parts of the transcript for what he believes is relevant and leaving other parts out. This wouldn't be an issue if the reader had access to that transcript to reference, yet most readers will not. For all we know context is being lost or distorted. By contrast I am able to cherrypick this work because the full context is available on ProleWiki and is linked in the thread so anyone can reference it. If I was writing a book I couldn't do this and would need to post the full text, either as a whole or in part, unless I was quoting a specific work that is meant to be read prior to the one I was working on - at which point I would naturally assume the reader had already read that work.
He begins with Tukhachevsky and Ul'rikh discussing Tukhachevsky's sabotage, pointing out how Ul'rikh becomes frustrated with Tukhachevsky trailing off from answering the question posed. The problem is we aren't shown what Tukhachevsky is actually saying. This is lost context and without it a full picture cannot be grasped. On its own this segment does seem to suggest the trial wasn't staged but without the added the context of what Tukhachevsky was saying we don't know this definitively. Furr cutting out sections he believes aren't necessary doesn't do him any favors and it's very easy for someone to use this to accuse him of misrepresenting the transcript to suit his agenda, doubly so since he's already damaged his position by the multiple rants and accusations of other historians being liars long before we started getting to the evidence.
He then covers a section where the the defendants are apparently confused about the dates of their involvement in the conspiracy. This is a much more credible section as it clarifies the inconsistency of their confessions, which substracts credence from the idea of the trials being staged or rehearsed. My biggest concern remains what I mentioned previously: we, the reader, don't have access to the transcript. We are reliant on Furr's presentation of it. Without being able to verify that transcript we have to take him at his word, cognizant of his biases, and only given what he has decided is worth our consumption. The last part can be fixed by simply presenting the entire transcript as it is without omissions of 'irrelevant' parts. Presented as is it's incredibly easy for someone to argue that he's leaving out parts that contradict his narrative. Without access to the transcript ourselves we can't really dispute a claim like that.
Furr uncharacteristically gives himself a W by citing O.F. Suvenirov's book about the purges from 1993, which Furr argues is inaccurate in its conclusions but that the evidence is solid. This is a point in his favor that makes him seem more credible; tragically it comes far too late to matter as he's already made himself look like a crackpot due to previous behavior. Nevertheless Suvenirov's work is something that can be used as a reference by the reader (provided they have it or can acquire it ofc) - something that is not true for the Tukhachevsky Affair trial transcript.
Then Furr starts listing some of the accused conspirators and pointing out they were rehabilitated by Khrushchev. This part is completely irrelevant and just shows an unhinged obsession with Khrushchev on Furr's part and that further damages his arguments. Like, my guy - please focus on the trial. Forget about Khrushchev for like five minutes omg.
He discusses Primakov's confession to a plan to bring Trotsky back into the USSR. He notes that Zybin, one of the accused, was eventually released and found innocent of all charges - later dying during the German invasion. This is a good addition that adds some strength to the idea that the conspirators weren't innocent since Zybin was named by the conspirators multiple times, detained and interrogated, but ultimately released with the charges dropped. If the state was looking for scapegoats it wouldn't have cared to released Zybin and would have just thrown him in with the rest. The fact they didn't suggests actual investigative work. Strangely Furr doesn't make this conclusion, simply presenting Zybin's accused role, clearance of charges, and subsequent death in combat. I'm actually thankful he didn't make any conclusions about Zybin since the evidence speaks for itself here. Point to Furr for actually making a strong case here.
Sadly this is the end of the trial transcript and I feel like I've been sold a whole cake while only receiving a single slice. Was that really it? All that evidence from the trial transcript? Feels less meatier than I expected.
Chapter 3 begins with Furr once again accusing everyone else of lying, something that should really be reserved for the end of the book when he's supposed to present the conclusion to his thesis. Mind you we've only seen the Trial Transcript (and not even all of it!) so far and that's not even half of the evidence Furr uses but for some goddamn reason he cannot resist yelling at clouds.
He starts first with attacking Boris A. Viktorov, claiming that Viktorov's work about the "unjust repression" of Stalin era figures like Tukhachevsky lacks evidence. He points out Viktorov's work - Without the "Secret" Stamp (1990) - published 200,000 copies. I don't know if that's a lot as I'm not familiar with Soviet/Russian book publishing. Furr says it is, but his word doesn't mean much at this point given how sketchy and flaky he's been so far. He briefly touches upon Viktorov quoting from a short story, but it is devoid of context so we - the reader - have no idea what it means. Furr simply says that short stories are not evidence (which is true, to be fair) but we have no idea what quote Viktorov was citing or what it was in reference to. Furr then points out that Viktorov calls the trial transcript "only a few pages long" and then correcting that by stating it is 172 pages long. As we, the reader, don't have access to the transcript we cannot confirm or deny this. Viktorov then says that the trial's verdict was predetermined by Voroshilov on June 12, with Furr disputing this by saying the trial verdict came June 11. This feels more like a nitpick as the verdict was apparently handed down June 11 at 11:35 PM, just 25 minutes before midnight and June 12 when Voroshilov signed the verdict. This isn't the egregious error Furr makes it out to be.
He then targets S. Yu. Ushakov & A. A. Stukalov and their book The Front of the Military Procurators and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever donned on Furr that if was going to cite so many other books he should probably recommend people read those first to understand why he thinks they're lying. Regardless, Ushakov & Stukalov reputedly wrote the book using the memoirs of Nikolai Afanas'ev. Furr disputes their authenticity by saying that Afanas'ev not wanting to publish them in the 50s after Stalin's death made no sense. This is a compelling argument but then he says it doesn't really matter anyway (lol) because the text itself is wrong. Though he says it's riddled with errors he only points out one: that Tukhachevsky never confessed, which Furr says is wrong citing multiple confessions by Tukhachevsky from several sources. It does seem like an odd claim to make - that Tukhachevsky never confessed - when the entire narrative about the trials is that the confessions weren't genuine.
He then pivots to Iulia Kantor where he states she's written about Tukhachevsky multiple times, had access to his investigation file & the trial transcript, and still insists he was innocent. This section mostly deals with analyzing Tukhachevsky's handwriting to dispute Kantor's claim (rooted in a pseudoscience called "graphology") that he was under duress when writing his confession. I'm not really equipped to analyze handwriting for accuracy (especially when mine is terrible and inconsistent lmao) so I'm gonna need to skip this section but I do need to point out that it feels like this was written with the intention of being read by people who were already well-versed in the Tukhachevsky Affair, research conducted on it, and discussions surrounding it. He cites works and figures that most people probably wouldn't have heard of and rarely offers more than a cursory explanation of who/what they are (if he bothers to do that at all!) which is extremely frustrating for someone like me whose going into this mostly blind. This work is very clearly not made for people just learning about the Affair which makes it far less accessible to the majority of people.
Chapter 4 shifts toward attacking Westerners who "lied" about the Affair and right off the bat Furr is ranting again - this time about the mountains of evidence proving Tukhachevsky & co. were guilty of colluding with the Nazis, Japanese, and Trotsky. By this time point, mind you, we've only be shown the Trial Transcript and other than suggesting a possible conspiracy to bring Trotsky back no link to Germany or Japan has been proven. Hell, even a link to Trotsky hasn't been proven yet. Japan hasn't even been mentioned at all except by Furr himself. Yet Furr keeps insisting there's so much evidence that there's too much to list all in one work.
"Trust me, bro. There's so much evidence, bro. You won't believe how much evidence there is, bro. Honest, bro. Please believe me, bro."
This is really pathetic behavior from someone purportedly trying to set the historical record straight. Like, what are you doing man? Present the evidence. Stop talking about it; show it. What is even the point of this kind of appeal? Stop teasing me with evidence and just present it ffs.
Anyway, once his rant is over he sets his sights on Stephen Kotkin - a member of the anti-communist Hoover Institution, a reactionary American think tank. He proceeds to tear into Kotkin's sourcing practices after a brief critique of him using scare quotes. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of verifying all of Kotkin's sources because I'm already spending way more time on this than I should but if Furr's claims here are truthful it doesn't paint a good picture of Kotkin and his sourcing tendencies. Just looking at how Kotkin writes already convinces me this is a man with an agenda he cannot even be bothered to hide. Now, sure, everybody has an agenda but a historian should do the absolute best they can to keep that agenda as restrained as possible so it doesn't interfere with the product of their work. Kotkin - judging by the quotes Furr is presenting (and there are a few) - is very obviously not doing this. He's not attempting to be objective at all judging by the language he's using.
In Chapter 5 we finally start to see some more of Furr's alleged "evidence" we've been teased multiple times with. He brings up Khrushchev briefly again but this time it is actually relevant, detailing a letter sent to Stalin from Yakir before his execution and how it was misrepresented by Zhukov and Shelepin. There's not really much to comment here; pictures of the letter are on the page but I don't read Russian so I can't assess what it actually says.
Chapter 6 presents Soviet intelligence reports on German reactions to the Affair. While this does seem to indicate the Germans were aware of the plot it doesn't necessarily prove they were actively engaged in it; rather it suggests the Germans were planning to use Tukhachevsky & co. to weaken the USSR in preparation for the German invasion. While there could have been collusion between the two groups this has yet to be proven.
Chapter 7 discusses Ustrialov's testimony and the link to Japan. Very odd for Furr to bring this up now, having mentioned Japan twice before as being involved in the Tukhachevsky Affair without presenting any evidence for this claim. But hey, at least it's finally here. Furr does make a strong case for the authenticity of Ustrialov's confession. Trotsky pops up again in this segment but is not directly being implicated in anything, simply being referred to by a German that Karl Radek was in contact with. There's a lot of talk about "rapprochement" between the USSR and Germany being advocated by Trotsky, which Trotsky never advocated for as Radek correctly recognizes. Furr doesn't seem to dwell on this much and ultimately goes back to Ustrialov and his links to the Japanese. He makes a very strong case for the Japan-Germany-Tukhachevsky link here, provided the information is accurate. This is the first point in book where it actually starts to seem like Furr is onto something - and that's a shame considering how hard he fumbled the beginning of the book because anybody tapping out on earlier chapters would miss this section entirely. This is why I said earlier that he needed to pose his question, present the evidence, and then his conclusion in that order. I kept reading; not many people would have done the same regardless of how many appeals to "objectivity" Furr made.
The biggest weakness in this conspiratorial train is Trotsky. Furr insists that the evidence proves Trotsky was involved, but that isn't what the evidence he's shown us says. He cites a previous book of his, The Moscow Trials As Evidence, which I haven't read so I don't know exactly what evidence he's using here is saying. All I know is that in this book - at least up until Chapter 7 - he has yet to to definitively prove Trotsky was involved in this conspiracy. What has been established so far is the existence of a conspiracy in the military that both the Japanese and Germans were aware of and possibly in contact with, but that part is shakier than the existence of the conspiracy itself - which if the evidence compiled here is reliable seems to strongly support.
In Chapter 8 he starts talking about the bloodstains on Tukhachevsky's confession letter. He contradicts himself by saying they don't look like bloodstains according to bloodstain analysis yet also says bloodstain analysis is unreliable so I'm not sure he stopped to really think this section through. At any rate, he's trying to argue that Tukhachevsky wasn't beaten into confessing and that leads him to taking aim at Khrushchev and Gorbachev - but at least this time his ranting is relevant. He is making a compelling case that they aren't stains of any kind. Based on the pictures he provides they don't look like any stains I've ever seen and resemble more cuts made by something sharp like a pair of scissors. Furr suggests as much but doesn't draw a complete conclusion other than that they don't look like stains from any kind of liquid; blood or otherwise. My biggest issue here is his argument is all over the place, positing 50 different theories at once instead of finding one and sticking with it. This seems erratic and once more makes him seem unhinged; like he was hopping mad when he wrote this section and couldn't control himself. There are a few sections like this earlier. Perhaps the best part about Chapter 7 is that it's entirely devoid of this nonsense and he delivers a plain, straightforward argument with evidence to back it up. If the rest of this book was more like Chapter 7 and less like Chapter 8 it would've been a far better read overall and a far more compelling argumentative case for the author's central thesis.
Chapter 9 opens with Furr unable to get to the damn point because he's too busy hyper-focusing on Khrushchev (and Gorbachev too but mostly Khrushchev) again. When he's done he finally starts discussing the Arao Document itself, which is apparently a Soviet document discussing photograph Japanese intelligence on the Tukhachevsky conspiracy. He makes a decent argument that the Shvernik Commission's analysis of the document as misleading or a forgery is likely wrong here and there's not much to say about that. This is more of Chapter 7 and that's a good thing. For some reason when the target of discussion is Japan Furr seems more restrained and coherent and less prone ranting.
Chapter 10 discusses the Romanov Letter from 1938 which discusses a Red Army technician who became aware of the plot in 1935, tried to leave of his own accord for refusing to partake in it, and was institutionalized in response. Voroshilov was apparently aware of this in 1935 but was under the impression the soldier genuinely had schizophrenia. This story is relayed through a session of the Military Soviet initiated by Voroshilov with Stalin present and through a separate letter sent between two Red Army commanders. He talks about some of the other conspirators implicated and even provides some more photographic evidence, which is nice. Sadly he goes on this weird tangent yet again where he insists that the conspirators were never proven innocent despite the mainstream line being that they're guilty. Which is, like, a very strange framing? You don't have to prove innocence; you have to prove guilt. I went over this earlier but Furr seems to be completely unfamiliar with the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" or why it even matters.
Chapter 11 covers Lyushkov's defection to the Japanese and the work of Alvin D. Coox to uncover the details behind it. Here Furr goes over how Lyushkov's narrative was inconsistent; he published one thing but told Japanese authorities something else. In this case he believed the conspiracies were real and that the alleged conspirators were guilty. Lyushkov would later work for the Japanese propaganda arm so this seems to track. Another strong, compelling case for Furr's central thesis. Strangely he spends time trying to cast doubt on the Kirov assassination but that doesn't seem particularly relevant so I don't know why he's bothering here.
Chapter 12 is once again covering non-Soviet/Russian sources, including Nazi Party officials. He cites a document captured by the Allies post-WWII which describes Tukhachevsky making a toast to the German Army for combating "world Jewry" as well as praising Goring while the Germans hope a military dictatorship will replace Stalin soon. He cites a discussion between Himmler and the defector Vlasov as well in which Vlasov compares the Tukhachevsky Affair to Operation Valkyrie. Furr then tries to back up this argument with a speech from Himmler and section of Goebbels' diary:
When – I believe it was in 1937 or 1938 – the great show trials took place in Moscow, and the former czarist military cadet, later Bolshevik general, Tukhachevsky, and other generals were executed, all of us in Europe, including us in the [Nazi] Party and in the SS, were of the opinion that here the Bolshevik system and Stalin had committed one of their greatest mistakes. In making this judgement of the situation we greatly deceived ourselves. We can truthfully and confidently state that. I believe that Russia would never have lasted through these two years of war – and she is now in the third year of war – if she had retained the former czarist generals.
The conference of the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters followed.... The Führer recalled the case of Tukhachevsky and expressed the opinion that we were entirely wrong then in believing that Stalin would ruin the Red Army by the way he handled it. The opposite was true: Stalin got rid of all opposition in the Red Army and thereby brought an end to defeatism.
To me this two passages don't seem to inherently imply awareness of a plot on their own; it's very easy to interpret them as simply believing Stalin was weakening his military.
Regardless the prior two examples further suggest that the Germans were aware of the plot and were banking on exploiting the chaos for their own benefit. I believe there's a clear distinction here: the Japanese appear to have been in cahoots with the plotters (or trying to become involved) whereas the Germans were simply aware of the plot and not directly involved but eager to reap the rewards.
Furr then pivots to Joseph Davies, the American ambassador to the USSR who was criticized for agreeing with the party line about the Tukhachevsky Affair and the Moscow Trials. Davies writes in his diary that the German Foreign Office told him that his assessment of Stalin being entrenched was wrong and that a military putsch may happen soon. This was apparently consistent with what much of the German military and intelligence believed.
This carries over a bit into Chapter 13, this time with the Czechoslovak ambassador Vojtech Mastny. The Germans and Czechoslovaks were apparently in talks of a non-aggression pact that ended abruptly. Mastny confided privately in the Czechoslovak president that his German equivalent told him the reason for this was because Hitler believed Stalin would soon be overthrown in a military coup. Furr argues that Hitler likely terminated the negotiations because a German-friendly USSR would make a NAP with Czechoslovakia unnecessary. Personally I'm not sure I agree with this take given Germany ended up invading Czechoslovakia in the end. At any rate he then discusses how the revelation of this information in 1987 was propagandized when it was translated into Russian and how it links to a conspiracy theory that the Germans fabricated evidence to frame Tukhachevsky. The evidence here is pretty solid and Furr is even able to talk about Khrushchev without going apeshit so that's a plus.
He brings up the Shvernik Commission again and the lack of evidence for the "German fabricated documents" story. Bobrov is doing most of the work here as IIRC he's the one translating all the Archival records from Russian into English or something along those lines. Apparently even in Khrushchev's times it was known by the CPSU members that the story was a hoax. He brings up Kantor again for some reason, saying that she didn't account for the Mastny-Benes note which seems like an odd complaint. She was working with material that Tukhachevsky's family had access to and I don't know if that note was part of that material. He also calls her a politically motivated ideologue and not a historian which is just very funny because he's also a politically motivated ideologue lol. Like, there's nothing "apolitical" about this book my dude - what are you even doing right now? Bro should really get a mirror.
Anyway, Furr goes back to the Pfaff article (the one that revealed the Mastny-Benes note) and how the Russian translation tampered with the original article. One omission says that Benes couldn't have informed the Soviets about the note; which is Khrushchev claimed in the 60s. The Gorbachev Era editors also made this claim, hence the omission. There were also two apparently fraudulent Politburo decisions from the original Pfaff article that the Russian translators included, though they would've had access to the Archives to know they weren't true. They apparently excluded a document that described French communists pushing for an alliance between France and the USSR. Furr claims this was excluded because it makes Stalin look good but that seems kinda dubious to me; I don't see what he's cooking here. Maybe if he included the text of the document so I could read I could figure out what he's talking about but he doesn't do that.
Furr next cites a letter between Neurath and Kandelaki which mentions Germany was willing to establish friendly relations with the USSR if a military dictatorship took over the country. The Austrian Chancellery was also, apparently, aware of Hitler seeking to work with dissident factions in the Red Army. Shockingly Furr is willing to concede that the evidence presented here isn't particularly damning but defends that it is important - and that much I can agree. It's definitely a convincing case for his thesis.
He brings up an interview Benes had with a Yugoslav journalist (name & publication uncited, tragically) and the U.S. ambassador, telling both of them that Tukhachevsky was planning to cement an alliance between the USSR and Germany. The problem is he doesn't cite the journalist's name or their paper and he doesn't explain where he got the information of Benes talking to ambassador Carr about Tukhachevsky; only that it was recorded by the envoy. Fairly disappointing as here as Furr was being good about citing his sources so far but since there's no immediate way to corroborate this section I can't really just take him at his word. When you write stuff like this you have to cite your sources. It's kinda crucial. I do love how he includes the Mastny-Benes note, though. Both the text and a photo.
Chapter 14 discusses the judges of the trial, five of whom were apparently implicated in the conspiracy and arrested. Here Furr brings up Khrushchev era rehabilitations and I'm a bit conflicted. On the one hand it is relevant but on the other the things he's talking about - specifically that rehabilitations were political and not proof of innocence, even going so far as to quote an anti-Stalin scholar (smart move!) - feel out of place here. This is something that should've been after the central thesis. Technically we are near the end but even so it feels like it should be further to the back. He spends far longer on this topic than he needs to before discussing the confessions of the judges and goes touches on Bukharin and the rationale at the trials. Very fascinating stuff.
Chapter 15 finally gets to the heart of Furr's thesis and Trotsky's alleged involvement. So far Trotsky has yet to actually be implicated in any of the evidence presented. Bizarrely, but unsurprisingly, Furr finds the time to rant about Khrushchev again and I audibly groaned. Can this man go five minutes without talking about Khrushchev? Evidently not as he spends the first section of the chapter droning on about Khrushchev's & Gorbachev's rehabilitations. This fucking dead horse has been beaten into mush at this point and is no longer recognizable as a once-living creature.
In the ultimate tease Furr states Trotsky's implication in the plot is actually in two of his other books (AAAAAHHHHHH) and that this one exclusively deals with Trotsky's mention in the trial transcript; i.e. the least damning of the evidence (this is assuming the "evidence" in the books is actually solid). Like I do need to stress that a confession is not inherently damning on its own regardless of whether a court accepts it as sufficient or not; it needs weight behind it for it to really matter and that weight comes from real, physical evidence like the series of documents that Furr's been presenting so far. If all Furr has is the testimonies of dead men and no physical evidence to prove Trotsky was behind it all then his core thesis - that Trotsky was the mastermind behind this whole conspiracy - frankly isn't as strong as he thinks it is. Trotsky may have been behind it. Stalin may have believed Trotsky was behind it when he wasn't. Trotsky may have been completely unaware and uninvolved it. To know which is true requires more than just people claiming it's true but this book doesn't present that evidence; it only offers hearsay - and all from the same group of people. Furr has so far presented strong evidence that there was a military conspiracy, that Japan was aware of it and possibly involved, that Germany was aware of it and possibly involved, that both the Czechoslovaks and Austrians knew about it, that the Americans possibly knew about it as well, and yet for Trotsky we only have hearsay. Empty accusations by cornered conspirators. Not physical documents, not records or letters or notes, not anything actually substantial. Maybe his other books have that evidence but this one doesn't. The best I can say, after reading this, is that Tukhachevsky was at the head of a conspiracy to install a military dictatorship that aimed to make friends with Japan and Germany. The best I can say about Trotsky is that it's possible he was involved but, right now, there's nothing to suggest anyone other than Tukhachevsky was in charge. Furr claims that "evidence" of Trotsky's involvement was uncovered by Pierre Broue and J. Arch Getty but he doesn't present that evidence here. If such evidence truly exists then where is it? Why is it not in this book where he's supposed to be making the case for this connection if this evidence apparently proves that connection?
Anyway, there's nothing to talk about in the Conclusion; it's all pretty straight forward. The Appendix is interesting - I'm assuming it's the full transcript of the trial? I don't understand why it's at the very end of all places but alright, sure. At least he actually did put the whole thing in there so people can read it. I'm not gonna dig through it myself as it took me like 10 hours to get through all this and type this whole post up so let me draw up my final thoughts:
Let's start with the bad:
Furr spends far too much time ranting & raving about Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and other historians to the point that he straight trails off to rant about them even when it's not relevant.
He spends way too much time talking about how much evidence he has before finally presenting it.
He presents his evidence in an incoherent order, doesn't always supply the full context, and constantly cites other resources without telling us what they said (or in some cases what they even are!) and just assumes we know what he's talking about.
He repeatedly circles back to the rehabilitations of the defendants again and again and again; treating the reader like a goldfish that doesn't retain information.
He beats us over the head with the fact that we need to be objective and have an open mind while constantly telling us we've been lied to and only we know the truth.
All of this together creates a composed work that feels like a street preacher who runs up to you to tell you how you need to repent because Jesus is coming and if you don't you're going Hell and is thus more likely to convince people to throw the book in the trash rather than keep reading because Furr doesn't know how to hook an audience since he's too busy yelling at them about how everybody's a liar except for him.
Okay, so now the good:
The evidence, though of inconsistent quality at times (or in some cases just poorly presented), is fairly solid in that he relies mostly on primary sources.
Furr makes a compelling argument that there was a conspiracy by Tukhachevsky and many others to overthrow the government and that the Japanese & Germans were banking on it being successful.
When he isn't raging about how they're all lying Furr actually does make strong arguments to dispute the claims of rival historians and the evidence (or lack thereof) that they rely on.
Overall? This book is fucking shit and that's a tragedy because it actually has good information stored within but I can't recommend anybody read this because it's so sloppy and amateurish. I recommend this book to somebody and if they even make it to Chapter 4 they're gonna look at me and ask me if I'm in a fucking cult because everything before Chapter 5 is mostly noise and fumes.
Anyway that's all I got to say and that's 10 hours of my life I'm not getting back. Feel free to critique my critique if you like; I'm receptive to criticism and will engage with good faith arguments.
LeninZedong - 3mon
I thought that this summary was funny (though because of how long it seemed to take, I might not read the work above anytime soon), but I did have one problem with what you said. You said that "he should be doing the opposite: present the evidence - then make your conclusion. You do this so that the other person can follow your line of reasoning based on what is presented, rather than dismissing you outright simply because of your claim", and while that certainly is correct, I do not think it is wrong to start it off by saying the hypothesis, which in Marxist texts can also be the conclusion, or sometimes, there is not a conclusion because the hypothesis was established at the beginning and the evidence they provide shows it well (though I unfortunately cannot cite specific works, but I do not think Lenin's work on imperialism had a proper conclusion), but I do agree that droning on about the narrative on the trials being a bunch of lies is sloppy and unprofessional (though this has more to do with the fact that Furr rants too much while providing little evidence if what you say about him was true, and less about putting the conclusion before the evidence).
Edit: What the hell someone upvoted it at the same time that I did. Is Furr's ghost haunting me?
5
La Dame d'Azur - 3mon
See, while I personally don't prefer starting your argument with the hypothesis is ideal I can concede that when done correctly it can work. The problem is Furr doesn't do it correctly. Furr starts his book by accusing others of lying without evidence, claiming he has plenty of evidence of his central claim without presenting it, and trails off on unhinged rants about Khrushchev/Gorbachev/other historians at random. It destroys his own credibility and if he's doing this in his other books then I can see why people call him a hack because this is textbook hack behavior.
Had he presented his hypothesis in a more grounded manner he'd come off as less insane. For example something like this:
"The traditional view of the Tukhachevsky Affair is that the accused were innocent victims of Stalinist tyranny and that the plot they were accused being part of didn't exist. I would argue otherwise: that the evidence suggests there was a very real plot and that all of the accused can be tied to it, but you don't have to take my word for it. In this book we're going to examine the evidence surrounding the Tukhachevsky Affair in detail and the context surrounding this evidence while I make the case that it proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the Tukhachevsky Conspiracy was a real threat to the Soviet government and that the subsequent actions of the Soviet government were in line with a measured security response."
^This is way more digestible for the average person than what Furr ultimately wrote. More analytical; less fanatical. I still personally don't agree with starting like this and would prefer an opening that simply questions the veracity of the claims and then invites the reader to look at the evidence with them as I think that makes the arguments more convincing but just doing it like this is a vast improvement over Furr's original opening in the Foreword & Introduction + the slog that was Chapters 1, 3, and 4.
2
LeninZedong - 3mon
Do not get me wrong, I am not justifying his strange introduction (if what you say is true); I just thought that the structure was not the primary issue at hand when talking about his work. Marxists know that structures of any sort are not meant to be applied mechanically.
It is unfortunate that it has some useful aspects to it, because it seems like the majority of the work is irrelevant to the issue.
pyromaiden in theory
Critique of "Trotsky and the Military Conspiracy" by Grover Furr
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Trotsky_and_the_Military_ConspiracyI discovered this work on ProleWiki while debating a friend of mine about the purges under Stalin and was immediately disappointed with the quality of the work. It is an extremely sloppy and downright amateurish work; not something I would expect to be published, much less cited. The purpose of this post is to try and go over the many glaring issues I find with how it was written and composed and to some extent some of the conclusions it draws.
Before even getting into the meat of the text we encounter this section from the Foreword. Already, before even seeing the "evidence", Furr is telling us it is true and that arguments to the contrary are inherently false and the people making them are lying.
This is not how you make your case in an argument. Furr is presenting his conclusion before presenting the evidence when he should be doing the opposite: present the evidence - then make your conclusion. You do this so that the other person can follow your line of reasoning based on what is presented, rather than dismissing you outright simply because of your claim. This is basic argumentative logic and I'm actually astonished he made such a critical error and that none of the other people who worked with him corrected it. You expect to see this in Internet arguments - hell, even I do it sometimes without thinking - but he had time to work on this book and so could've avoided this pitfall easily. Furr's appeal for readers to be objective is utterly pointless since he's already told them what to believe before they've seen anything. This is the easiest way to get someone to dismiss the work without reading it just by the conclusion it has drawn being presented when the reader knows nothing about what is behind that conclusion. When dealing with something this controversial and delicate you kind of have to assume that the reader may need to be convinced and won't be objective right off the bat; to do so is to potentially drive them to put the book down.
A far better way to start would be to question the enduring narrative by asking if the evidence supports the mainstream conclusion, then present the evidence and analyze it. Furr doesn't do this. He tells the reader their information is wrong, the people who gave it them are lying, and that he knows the truth. This is textbook manipulation; not education. He isn't making a case but dictating interpretation. This would be bad enough on its own but in the Introduction he can't stop himself from doubling down on this awful strategy. He spends the entirety of Chapters 1, 3, and 4 doing this as well. Again: the book has barely started, the reader has not yet been present much evidence for Furr's conclusions, and is already being told they've been lied to, that any initial beliefs they had were wrong, etc. This is terrible argumentation. This kind of stuff should be at the end of the book in the conclusion section; not the beginning.
In the "What Happened" section of the Introduction he presents the NYT article without actually presenting the text of the article, simply showing the headers and subheaders. I don't know why he didn't include the full text; he seems to believe the article was relevant to his argument so why not include the whole thing? He argues here that the "guilt of the defenders was widely doubted"; yet none of the headers nor subheaders imply anything of the sort - they simply cite that arrests have occurred. If the text of the article itself is presuming innocence then why not present that text? He apparently had access to the article if he can quote the headers and subheaders; yet he did not, while implying the article itself assumes innocence when the headers/subheaders don't imply this at all. This seems like relevant information he is leaving out for some reason. What's more is treats presumption of innocence as an inherently bad thing, which is simply crazy. The whole concept of a "fair trial" is built on the idea that guilt must be proven. This is what makes the trial "fair" in the first place. The single greatest critique of modern judiciary systems is they often don't even try to prove guilt in the first place so suggesting that presuming innocence is bad is an utterly bewildering take. And yes, he is implying it's a bad thing here as he follows up this claim by presenting Trotsky predicting Stalin's downfall and then immediately claiming Trotsky was lying. The first issue with this is that it isn't clear where this quote is coming from; is it part of the NYT article? Because it's the only header/subheader separated from the rest. If not where is it coming from? This issue is easy to remedy: just publish the full text of the article, which Furr doesn't do. The second issue with this part of the text is that he says Trotsky is lying when he wasn't. Trotsky was offering his perspective. That perspective may be flawed or inaccurate but that's not the same as lying. He argues that Trotsky is lying because Trotsky was behind the conspiracy but, again, he is making this claim without having presented any evidence yet. We, the reader, are under no obligation to take his claim at face value when he has yet to present his case for it. From our perspective Trotsky isn't lying as Furr hasn't proven Trotsky's involvement yet. This is why it's important to present evidence first before drawing conclusions.
Furr then goes over the process of acquiring the Trial Transcript but, bizarrely, doesn't bother to present the transcript immediately after. This is a strange choice to me since that seems to be the next logical conclusion.
Instead Furr has a section titled "Other Arrests and Trials of Military Men" which reads like something that should have been presented earlier in the book as it crucially mentions at the end how there is little modern research into the Tukhachevsky Affair. This would've been better placed earlier in the book and would have made a more compelling introduction to the book's central thesis by revisiting this affair and comparing the evidence we have with the conclusions already drawn. This way it reads less like propaganda and more like a proper work of history that aims to educate the audience and challenge their perception of historical events rather than telling them what to believe and accuse others of lying. Yet, confusingly, Furr places this section in the middle of the discussion about the transcript where it feels completely out of place. The first paragraph is particularly objectionable:
Here he is again making a claim without having presented the evidence. He talks about that evidence and yet, again, we the reader haven't seen it yet. Already it feels like I'm wasting my time with this guy; he keeps telling me the other historians are wrong and that the evidence proves it but he is refusing to actually show me the evidence. Stuff like this drives readers away; it does not hook them in. It feels like an old man yelling at a cloud and not a serious historian doing serious historical research. This damages the work as a whole as well as Furr's arguments by creating a negative feeling toward them. Where is the evidence he keeps talking about? Why is he not showing it? It starts to feel like he's hiding something and casts doubt in the reader's mind that he actually knows what he's talking about.
He then presents an entire screed of how Stalin was framed, how it was all Trotsky's (and Khrushchev's) fault, and how everything we know about Stalin is a lie and I feel the urge to bang my head against the wall.
REMINDER THAT THIS IS THE SECTION THAT IS SUPPOSED TO DISCUSS THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE TUKHACHEVSKY TRIAL - NONE OF THIS IS REMOTELY RELEVANT AND WE STILL HAVEN'T SEEN THE TRANSCRIPT YET.
It doesn't matter how "objective" you try to be here - and I'm beginning to wonder if Furr actually knows what this word means - no one is going to go through this and think he's not batshit crazy. This is just a pro-Stalin rant. It doesn't even belong in this section of the book. Hell, much of it doesn't even belong in the book at all. The book is supposed to be about the Tukhachevsky Affair and Trotsky's involvement in it; not Stalin's legacy. That's an entirely separate point of discussion of which the Tukhachevsky Affair is only a smell piece in a wider puzzle. If you want to challenge the reader to re-think their view of Stalin you need to wait to the conclusion at the end of the book, after they've absorbed all the evidence you've presented (which we still haven't seen!). And even then it should be limited primarily to the Tukhachevsky Affair since that is the topic at hand, not fucking Khrushchev's Secret Speech or Mikhail Gorbachev. Furr is just rambling incoherently throughout this section and its destroying his own credibility before his evidence has even been viewed. He keeps talking about how Stalin's enemies have no evidence - yet so far we haven't seen his!
Furr then decides to talk about his research into the Tukhachevsky Affair. This is yet another thing that should've been placed earlier in the book; especially since it plants the seeds that traditional historians may have been wrong by specifically citing Robert Conquest and his work, The Great Terror, by name. He even discusses the inherent anti-communist bias in academia. Like, this is actually a good section and would have made previous points in the book stronger had he placed it earlier in the pecking order but for some unknown reason he placed it here after a pro-Stalin rant and before the actual transcript of the trial itself. Just an overall baffling choice.
For some confounding reason Furr still has yet to present the Trial Transcript. The section title "The Trial Transcript" is deceptively named and is really just him ranting again, accusing others of lying and faking evidence, etc. We have yet to be given a reason to take him at his word. If anything it appears more likely that he's trying to aggressively plant the seeds of doubt into our minds not by using subtext (which as we all know is for cowards!) but by straight up telling us that our conclusions are wrong, that he is right, that he knows the truth, and that we need to listen to him. Honestly at this point in the book you're not going to have an objective view on anything no matter how often Furr tries to appeal to objectivity. Furr has had every opportunity to try and persuade the reader and has categorically failed to do so. If this is the quality of work he's putting out then I am weary of ever trying to parse through Khrushchev Lied because so far the only thing Furr has proven is that he doesn't know how to make an argument and can't stop himself from going on wild rants. This man was in his seventies when he wrote this book and he was making arguments like a grade schooler. How am I supposed to take his claims seriously? Especially when I haven't seen the evidence? He's destroying his own arguments and the credibility of his research like this. He could very well still be correct about everything (if we ever see that evidence he keeps talking about but never shows!) but the way he is presenting his research and arguments is so careless that if I were a professor at a prestigious college and a student turned this in as their thesis I would fail them before even getting to the first chapter and then tell them to their face to never write again.
Chapter 1 continues with Furr's seemingly endless errors. We still haven't seen the Trial Transcript we've been promised. Instead Furr decides to spend time on the Shvernik Report from the Khrushchev Era. He insists this is relevant but it takes several paragraphs for anything remotely relevant to the Tukahchevsky Trial to crop up. By the time we get to that relevant material we're smacked in the face with this absolute fucking gem of a line:
MY BROTHER IN MARX, WE HAVE NOT EVEN SEEN THE TRANSCRIPT ITSELF YET AND YOU ARE ALREADY TRYING TO ARGUE THAT THE SHVERNIK REPORT IS TAKING IT OUT OF CONTEXT.
Any discussion on the Shvernik Report (and only the relevant parts, since this book isn't about the fucking Shvernik Report or Nikita Khrushchev) should have come after presenting the core transcript of the trial has been shown to the reader. I feel like I'm rewatching Mike Pence in the 2020 Veep debate dodge questions like a fighter pilot dodges missiles the way Furr continues to dodge the trial transcript he keeps teasing but refuses to expose. This is the intellectual equivalent of blue balling.
Now, to Furr's credit, he does actually provide the context the Shvernik Report left out here. It's totally out of place as again an analysis of the Shvernik Report should have come after the trial transcript but at least it is here. We're finally seeing the "evidence" he's been harping on about. He is correct here that they omitted the context and presented Yakir's & Uborevich's trial answers in a dishonest framing. But this is like the bare minimum he needed to do so I'm not giving him points for that after he's done so much to sabotage his own credibility. This is the stuff we should've been getting into from the beginning of the novel; not all those rants about Khrushchev and Trotsky and how every other historian is lying. Even so this isn't the transcript itself, which is what we've been waiting for all this time.
In Chapter 2 Furr begins arguing that the defendants' confessions were genuine. I really think citing the full transcripts work better than the cherrypicking he does with them. He's combing parts of the transcript for what he believes is relevant and leaving other parts out. This wouldn't be an issue if the reader had access to that transcript to reference, yet most readers will not. For all we know context is being lost or distorted. By contrast I am able to cherrypick this work because the full context is available on ProleWiki and is linked in the thread so anyone can reference it. If I was writing a book I couldn't do this and would need to post the full text, either as a whole or in part, unless I was quoting a specific work that is meant to be read prior to the one I was working on - at which point I would naturally assume the reader had already read that work.
He begins with Tukhachevsky and Ul'rikh discussing Tukhachevsky's sabotage, pointing out how Ul'rikh becomes frustrated with Tukhachevsky trailing off from answering the question posed. The problem is we aren't shown what Tukhachevsky is actually saying. This is lost context and without it a full picture cannot be grasped. On its own this segment does seem to suggest the trial wasn't staged but without the added the context of what Tukhachevsky was saying we don't know this definitively. Furr cutting out sections he believes aren't necessary doesn't do him any favors and it's very easy for someone to use this to accuse him of misrepresenting the transcript to suit his agenda, doubly so since he's already damaged his position by the multiple rants and accusations of other historians being liars long before we started getting to the evidence.
He then covers a section where the the defendants are apparently confused about the dates of their involvement in the conspiracy. This is a much more credible section as it clarifies the inconsistency of their confessions, which substracts credence from the idea of the trials being staged or rehearsed. My biggest concern remains what I mentioned previously: we, the reader, don't have access to the transcript. We are reliant on Furr's presentation of it. Without being able to verify that transcript we have to take him at his word, cognizant of his biases, and only given what he has decided is worth our consumption. The last part can be fixed by simply presenting the entire transcript as it is without omissions of 'irrelevant' parts. Presented as is it's incredibly easy for someone to argue that he's leaving out parts that contradict his narrative. Without access to the transcript ourselves we can't really dispute a claim like that.
Furr uncharacteristically gives himself a W by citing O.F. Suvenirov's book about the purges from 1993, which Furr argues is inaccurate in its conclusions but that the evidence is solid. This is a point in his favor that makes him seem more credible; tragically it comes far too late to matter as he's already made himself look like a crackpot due to previous behavior. Nevertheless Suvenirov's work is something that can be used as a reference by the reader (provided they have it or can acquire it ofc) - something that is not true for the Tukhachevsky Affair trial transcript.
Then Furr starts listing some of the accused conspirators and pointing out they were rehabilitated by Khrushchev. This part is completely irrelevant and just shows an unhinged obsession with Khrushchev on Furr's part and that further damages his arguments. Like, my guy - please focus on the trial. Forget about Khrushchev for like five minutes omg.
He discusses Primakov's confession to a plan to bring Trotsky back into the USSR. He notes that Zybin, one of the accused, was eventually released and found innocent of all charges - later dying during the German invasion. This is a good addition that adds some strength to the idea that the conspirators weren't innocent since Zybin was named by the conspirators multiple times, detained and interrogated, but ultimately released with the charges dropped. If the state was looking for scapegoats it wouldn't have cared to released Zybin and would have just thrown him in with the rest. The fact they didn't suggests actual investigative work. Strangely Furr doesn't make this conclusion, simply presenting Zybin's accused role, clearance of charges, and subsequent death in combat. I'm actually thankful he didn't make any conclusions about Zybin since the evidence speaks for itself here. Point to Furr for actually making a strong case here.
Sadly this is the end of the trial transcript and I feel like I've been sold a whole cake while only receiving a single slice. Was that really it? All that evidence from the trial transcript? Feels less meatier than I expected.
Chapter 3 begins with Furr once again accusing everyone else of lying, something that should really be reserved for the end of the book when he's supposed to present the conclusion to his thesis. Mind you we've only seen the Trial Transcript (and not even all of it!) so far and that's not even half of the evidence Furr uses but for some goddamn reason he cannot resist yelling at clouds.
He starts first with attacking Boris A. Viktorov, claiming that Viktorov's work about the "unjust repression" of Stalin era figures like Tukhachevsky lacks evidence. He points out Viktorov's work - Without the "Secret" Stamp (1990) - published 200,000 copies. I don't know if that's a lot as I'm not familiar with Soviet/Russian book publishing. Furr says it is, but his word doesn't mean much at this point given how sketchy and flaky he's been so far. He briefly touches upon Viktorov quoting from a short story, but it is devoid of context so we - the reader - have no idea what it means. Furr simply says that short stories are not evidence (which is true, to be fair) but we have no idea what quote Viktorov was citing or what it was in reference to. Furr then points out that Viktorov calls the trial transcript "only a few pages long" and then correcting that by stating it is 172 pages long. As we, the reader, don't have access to the transcript we cannot confirm or deny this. Viktorov then says that the trial's verdict was predetermined by Voroshilov on June 12, with Furr disputing this by saying the trial verdict came June 11. This feels more like a nitpick as the verdict was apparently handed down June 11 at 11:35 PM, just 25 minutes before midnight and June 12 when Voroshilov signed the verdict. This isn't the egregious error Furr makes it out to be.
He then targets S. Yu. Ushakov & A. A. Stukalov and their book The Front of the Military Procurators and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever donned on Furr that if was going to cite so many other books he should probably recommend people read those first to understand why he thinks they're lying. Regardless, Ushakov & Stukalov reputedly wrote the book using the memoirs of Nikolai Afanas'ev. Furr disputes their authenticity by saying that Afanas'ev not wanting to publish them in the 50s after Stalin's death made no sense. This is a compelling argument but then he says it doesn't really matter anyway (lol) because the text itself is wrong. Though he says it's riddled with errors he only points out one: that Tukhachevsky never confessed, which Furr says is wrong citing multiple confessions by Tukhachevsky from several sources. It does seem like an odd claim to make - that Tukhachevsky never confessed - when the entire narrative about the trials is that the confessions weren't genuine.
He then pivots to Iulia Kantor where he states she's written about Tukhachevsky multiple times, had access to his investigation file & the trial transcript, and still insists he was innocent. This section mostly deals with analyzing Tukhachevsky's handwriting to dispute Kantor's claim (rooted in a pseudoscience called "graphology") that he was under duress when writing his confession. I'm not really equipped to analyze handwriting for accuracy (especially when mine is terrible and inconsistent lmao) so I'm gonna need to skip this section but I do need to point out that it feels like this was written with the intention of being read by people who were already well-versed in the Tukhachevsky Affair, research conducted on it, and discussions surrounding it. He cites works and figures that most people probably wouldn't have heard of and rarely offers more than a cursory explanation of who/what they are (if he bothers to do that at all!) which is extremely frustrating for someone like me whose going into this mostly blind. This work is very clearly not made for people just learning about the Affair which makes it far less accessible to the majority of people.
Chapter 4 shifts toward attacking Westerners who "lied" about the Affair and right off the bat Furr is ranting again - this time about the mountains of evidence proving Tukhachevsky & co. were guilty of colluding with the Nazis, Japanese, and Trotsky. By this time point, mind you, we've only be shown the Trial Transcript and other than suggesting a possible conspiracy to bring Trotsky back no link to Germany or Japan has been proven. Hell, even a link to Trotsky hasn't been proven yet. Japan hasn't even been mentioned at all except by Furr himself. Yet Furr keeps insisting there's so much evidence that there's too much to list all in one work.
"Trust me, bro. There's so much evidence, bro. You won't believe how much evidence there is, bro. Honest, bro. Please believe me, bro."
This is really pathetic behavior from someone purportedly trying to set the historical record straight. Like, what are you doing man? Present the evidence. Stop talking about it; show it. What is even the point of this kind of appeal? Stop teasing me with evidence and just present it ffs.
Anyway, once his rant is over he sets his sights on Stephen Kotkin - a member of the anti-communist Hoover Institution, a reactionary American think tank. He proceeds to tear into Kotkin's sourcing practices after a brief critique of him using scare quotes. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of verifying all of Kotkin's sources because I'm already spending way more time on this than I should but if Furr's claims here are truthful it doesn't paint a good picture of Kotkin and his sourcing tendencies. Just looking at how Kotkin writes already convinces me this is a man with an agenda he cannot even be bothered to hide. Now, sure, everybody has an agenda but a historian should do the absolute best they can to keep that agenda as restrained as possible so it doesn't interfere with the product of their work. Kotkin - judging by the quotes Furr is presenting (and there are a few) - is very obviously not doing this. He's not attempting to be objective at all judging by the language he's using.
In Chapter 5 we finally start to see some more of Furr's alleged "evidence" we've been teased multiple times with. He brings up Khrushchev briefly again but this time it is actually relevant, detailing a letter sent to Stalin from Yakir before his execution and how it was misrepresented by Zhukov and Shelepin. There's not really much to comment here; pictures of the letter are on the page but I don't read Russian so I can't assess what it actually says.
Chapter 6 presents Soviet intelligence reports on German reactions to the Affair. While this does seem to indicate the Germans were aware of the plot it doesn't necessarily prove they were actively engaged in it; rather it suggests the Germans were planning to use Tukhachevsky & co. to weaken the USSR in preparation for the German invasion. While there could have been collusion between the two groups this has yet to be proven.
Chapter 7 discusses Ustrialov's testimony and the link to Japan. Very odd for Furr to bring this up now, having mentioned Japan twice before as being involved in the Tukhachevsky Affair without presenting any evidence for this claim. But hey, at least it's finally here. Furr does make a strong case for the authenticity of Ustrialov's confession. Trotsky pops up again in this segment but is not directly being implicated in anything, simply being referred to by a German that Karl Radek was in contact with. There's a lot of talk about "rapprochement" between the USSR and Germany being advocated by Trotsky, which Trotsky never advocated for as Radek correctly recognizes. Furr doesn't seem to dwell on this much and ultimately goes back to Ustrialov and his links to the Japanese. He makes a very strong case for the Japan-Germany-Tukhachevsky link here, provided the information is accurate. This is the first point in book where it actually starts to seem like Furr is onto something - and that's a shame considering how hard he fumbled the beginning of the book because anybody tapping out on earlier chapters would miss this section entirely. This is why I said earlier that he needed to pose his question, present the evidence, and then his conclusion in that order. I kept reading; not many people would have done the same regardless of how many appeals to "objectivity" Furr made.
The biggest weakness in this conspiratorial train is Trotsky. Furr insists that the evidence proves Trotsky was involved, but that isn't what the evidence he's shown us says. He cites a previous book of his, The Moscow Trials As Evidence, which I haven't read so I don't know exactly what evidence he's using here is saying. All I know is that in this book - at least up until Chapter 7 - he has yet to to definitively prove Trotsky was involved in this conspiracy. What has been established so far is the existence of a conspiracy in the military that both the Japanese and Germans were aware of and possibly in contact with, but that part is shakier than the existence of the conspiracy itself - which if the evidence compiled here is reliable seems to strongly support.
In Chapter 8 he starts talking about the bloodstains on Tukhachevsky's confession letter. He contradicts himself by saying they don't look like bloodstains according to bloodstain analysis yet also says bloodstain analysis is unreliable so I'm not sure he stopped to really think this section through. At any rate, he's trying to argue that Tukhachevsky wasn't beaten into confessing and that leads him to taking aim at Khrushchev and Gorbachev - but at least this time his ranting is relevant. He is making a compelling case that they aren't stains of any kind. Based on the pictures he provides they don't look like any stains I've ever seen and resemble more cuts made by something sharp like a pair of scissors. Furr suggests as much but doesn't draw a complete conclusion other than that they don't look like stains from any kind of liquid; blood or otherwise. My biggest issue here is his argument is all over the place, positing 50 different theories at once instead of finding one and sticking with it. This seems erratic and once more makes him seem unhinged; like he was hopping mad when he wrote this section and couldn't control himself. There are a few sections like this earlier. Perhaps the best part about Chapter 7 is that it's entirely devoid of this nonsense and he delivers a plain, straightforward argument with evidence to back it up. If the rest of this book was more like Chapter 7 and less like Chapter 8 it would've been a far better read overall and a far more compelling argumentative case for the author's central thesis.
Chapter 9 opens with Furr unable to get to the damn point because he's too busy hyper-focusing on Khrushchev (and Gorbachev too but mostly Khrushchev) again. When he's done he finally starts discussing the Arao Document itself, which is apparently a Soviet document discussing photograph Japanese intelligence on the Tukhachevsky conspiracy. He makes a decent argument that the Shvernik Commission's analysis of the document as misleading or a forgery is likely wrong here and there's not much to say about that. This is more of Chapter 7 and that's a good thing. For some reason when the target of discussion is Japan Furr seems more restrained and coherent and less prone ranting.
Chapter 10 discusses the Romanov Letter from 1938 which discusses a Red Army technician who became aware of the plot in 1935, tried to leave of his own accord for refusing to partake in it, and was institutionalized in response. Voroshilov was apparently aware of this in 1935 but was under the impression the soldier genuinely had schizophrenia. This story is relayed through a session of the Military Soviet initiated by Voroshilov with Stalin present and through a separate letter sent between two Red Army commanders. He talks about some of the other conspirators implicated and even provides some more photographic evidence, which is nice. Sadly he goes on this weird tangent yet again where he insists that the conspirators were never proven innocent despite the mainstream line being that they're guilty. Which is, like, a very strange framing? You don't have to prove innocence; you have to prove guilt. I went over this earlier but Furr seems to be completely unfamiliar with the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" or why it even matters.
Chapter 11 covers Lyushkov's defection to the Japanese and the work of Alvin D. Coox to uncover the details behind it. Here Furr goes over how Lyushkov's narrative was inconsistent; he published one thing but told Japanese authorities something else. In this case he believed the conspiracies were real and that the alleged conspirators were guilty. Lyushkov would later work for the Japanese propaganda arm so this seems to track. Another strong, compelling case for Furr's central thesis. Strangely he spends time trying to cast doubt on the Kirov assassination but that doesn't seem particularly relevant so I don't know why he's bothering here.
Chapter 12 is once again covering non-Soviet/Russian sources, including Nazi Party officials. He cites a document captured by the Allies post-WWII which describes Tukhachevsky making a toast to the German Army for combating "world Jewry" as well as praising Goring while the Germans hope a military dictatorship will replace Stalin soon. He cites a discussion between Himmler and the defector Vlasov as well in which Vlasov compares the Tukhachevsky Affair to Operation Valkyrie. Furr then tries to back up this argument with a speech from Himmler and section of Goebbels' diary:
To me this two passages don't seem to inherently imply awareness of a plot on their own; it's very easy to interpret them as simply believing Stalin was weakening his military.
Regardless the prior two examples further suggest that the Germans were aware of the plot and were banking on exploiting the chaos for their own benefit. I believe there's a clear distinction here: the Japanese appear to have been in cahoots with the plotters (or trying to become involved) whereas the Germans were simply aware of the plot and not directly involved but eager to reap the rewards.
Furr then pivots to Joseph Davies, the American ambassador to the USSR who was criticized for agreeing with the party line about the Tukhachevsky Affair and the Moscow Trials. Davies writes in his diary that the German Foreign Office told him that his assessment of Stalin being entrenched was wrong and that a military putsch may happen soon. This was apparently consistent with what much of the German military and intelligence believed.
This carries over a bit into Chapter 13, this time with the Czechoslovak ambassador Vojtech Mastny. The Germans and Czechoslovaks were apparently in talks of a non-aggression pact that ended abruptly. Mastny confided privately in the Czechoslovak president that his German equivalent told him the reason for this was because Hitler believed Stalin would soon be overthrown in a military coup. Furr argues that Hitler likely terminated the negotiations because a German-friendly USSR would make a NAP with Czechoslovakia unnecessary. Personally I'm not sure I agree with this take given Germany ended up invading Czechoslovakia in the end. At any rate he then discusses how the revelation of this information in 1987 was propagandized when it was translated into Russian and how it links to a conspiracy theory that the Germans fabricated evidence to frame Tukhachevsky. The evidence here is pretty solid and Furr is even able to talk about Khrushchev without going apeshit so that's a plus.
He brings up the Shvernik Commission again and the lack of evidence for the "German fabricated documents" story. Bobrov is doing most of the work here as IIRC he's the one translating all the Archival records from Russian into English or something along those lines. Apparently even in Khrushchev's times it was known by the CPSU members that the story was a hoax. He brings up Kantor again for some reason, saying that she didn't account for the Mastny-Benes note which seems like an odd complaint. She was working with material that Tukhachevsky's family had access to and I don't know if that note was part of that material. He also calls her a politically motivated ideologue and not a historian which is just very funny because he's also a politically motivated ideologue lol. Like, there's nothing "apolitical" about this book my dude - what are you even doing right now? Bro should really get a mirror.
Anyway, Furr goes back to the Pfaff article (the one that revealed the Mastny-Benes note) and how the Russian translation tampered with the original article. One omission says that Benes couldn't have informed the Soviets about the note; which is Khrushchev claimed in the 60s. The Gorbachev Era editors also made this claim, hence the omission. There were also two apparently fraudulent Politburo decisions from the original Pfaff article that the Russian translators included, though they would've had access to the Archives to know they weren't true. They apparently excluded a document that described French communists pushing for an alliance between France and the USSR. Furr claims this was excluded because it makes Stalin look good but that seems kinda dubious to me; I don't see what he's cooking here. Maybe if he included the text of the document so I could read I could figure out what he's talking about but he doesn't do that.
Furr next cites a letter between Neurath and Kandelaki which mentions Germany was willing to establish friendly relations with the USSR if a military dictatorship took over the country. The Austrian Chancellery was also, apparently, aware of Hitler seeking to work with dissident factions in the Red Army. Shockingly Furr is willing to concede that the evidence presented here isn't particularly damning but defends that it is important - and that much I can agree. It's definitely a convincing case for his thesis.
He brings up an interview Benes had with a Yugoslav journalist (name & publication uncited, tragically) and the U.S. ambassador, telling both of them that Tukhachevsky was planning to cement an alliance between the USSR and Germany. The problem is he doesn't cite the journalist's name or their paper and he doesn't explain where he got the information of Benes talking to ambassador Carr about Tukhachevsky; only that it was recorded by the envoy. Fairly disappointing as here as Furr was being good about citing his sources so far but since there's no immediate way to corroborate this section I can't really just take him at his word. When you write stuff like this you have to cite your sources. It's kinda crucial. I do love how he includes the Mastny-Benes note, though. Both the text and a photo.
Chapter 14 discusses the judges of the trial, five of whom were apparently implicated in the conspiracy and arrested. Here Furr brings up Khrushchev era rehabilitations and I'm a bit conflicted. On the one hand it is relevant but on the other the things he's talking about - specifically that rehabilitations were political and not proof of innocence, even going so far as to quote an anti-Stalin scholar (smart move!) - feel out of place here. This is something that should've been after the central thesis. Technically we are near the end but even so it feels like it should be further to the back. He spends far longer on this topic than he needs to before discussing the confessions of the judges and goes touches on Bukharin and the rationale at the trials. Very fascinating stuff.
Chapter 15 finally gets to the heart of Furr's thesis and Trotsky's alleged involvement. So far Trotsky has yet to actually be implicated in any of the evidence presented. Bizarrely, but unsurprisingly, Furr finds the time to rant about Khrushchev again and I audibly groaned. Can this man go five minutes without talking about Khrushchev? Evidently not as he spends the first section of the chapter droning on about Khrushchev's & Gorbachev's rehabilitations. This fucking dead horse has been beaten into mush at this point and is no longer recognizable as a once-living creature.
In the ultimate tease Furr states Trotsky's implication in the plot is actually in two of his other books (AAAAAHHHHHH) and that this one exclusively deals with Trotsky's mention in the trial transcript; i.e. the least damning of the evidence (this is assuming the "evidence" in the books is actually solid). Like I do need to stress that a confession is not inherently damning on its own regardless of whether a court accepts it as sufficient or not; it needs weight behind it for it to really matter and that weight comes from real, physical evidence like the series of documents that Furr's been presenting so far. If all Furr has is the testimonies of dead men and no physical evidence to prove Trotsky was behind it all then his core thesis - that Trotsky was the mastermind behind this whole conspiracy - frankly isn't as strong as he thinks it is. Trotsky may have been behind it. Stalin may have believed Trotsky was behind it when he wasn't. Trotsky may have been completely unaware and uninvolved it. To know which is true requires more than just people claiming it's true but this book doesn't present that evidence; it only offers hearsay - and all from the same group of people. Furr has so far presented strong evidence that there was a military conspiracy, that Japan was aware of it and possibly involved, that Germany was aware of it and possibly involved, that both the Czechoslovaks and Austrians knew about it, that the Americans possibly knew about it as well, and yet for Trotsky we only have hearsay. Empty accusations by cornered conspirators. Not physical documents, not records or letters or notes, not anything actually substantial. Maybe his other books have that evidence but this one doesn't. The best I can say, after reading this, is that Tukhachevsky was at the head of a conspiracy to install a military dictatorship that aimed to make friends with Japan and Germany. The best I can say about Trotsky is that it's possible he was involved but, right now, there's nothing to suggest anyone other than Tukhachevsky was in charge. Furr claims that "evidence" of Trotsky's involvement was uncovered by Pierre Broue and J. Arch Getty but he doesn't present that evidence here. If such evidence truly exists then where is it? Why is it not in this book where he's supposed to be making the case for this connection if this evidence apparently proves that connection?
Anyway, there's nothing to talk about in the Conclusion; it's all pretty straight forward. The Appendix is interesting - I'm assuming it's the full transcript of the trial? I don't understand why it's at the very end of all places but alright, sure. At least he actually did put the whole thing in there so people can read it. I'm not gonna dig through it myself as it took me like 10 hours to get through all this and type this whole post up so let me draw up my final thoughts:
Let's start with the bad:
Okay, so now the good:
Overall? This book is fucking shit and that's a tragedy because it actually has good information stored within but I can't recommend anybody read this because it's so sloppy and amateurish. I recommend this book to somebody and if they even make it to Chapter 4 they're gonna look at me and ask me if I'm in a fucking cult because everything before Chapter 5 is mostly noise and fumes.
Anyway that's all I got to say and that's 10 hours of my life I'm not getting back. Feel free to critique my critique if you like; I'm receptive to criticism and will engage with good faith arguments.
I thought that this summary was funny (though because of how long it seemed to take, I might not read the work above anytime soon), but I did have one problem with what you said. You said that "he should be doing the opposite: present the evidence - then make your conclusion. You do this so that the other person can follow your line of reasoning based on what is presented, rather than dismissing you outright simply because of your claim", and while that certainly is correct, I do not think it is wrong to start it off by saying the hypothesis, which in Marxist texts can also be the conclusion, or sometimes, there is not a conclusion because the hypothesis was established at the beginning and the evidence they provide shows it well (though I unfortunately cannot cite specific works, but I do not think Lenin's work on imperialism had a proper conclusion), but I do agree that droning on about the narrative on the trials being a bunch of lies is sloppy and unprofessional (though this has more to do with the fact that Furr rants too much while providing little evidence if what you say about him was true, and less about putting the conclusion before the evidence).
Edit: What the hell someone upvoted it at the same time that I did. Is Furr's ghost haunting me?
See, while I personally don't prefer starting your argument with the hypothesis is ideal I can concede that when done correctly it can work. The problem is Furr doesn't do it correctly. Furr starts his book by accusing others of lying without evidence, claiming he has plenty of evidence of his central claim without presenting it, and trails off on unhinged rants about Khrushchev/Gorbachev/other historians at random. It destroys his own credibility and if he's doing this in his other books then I can see why people call him a hack because this is textbook hack behavior.
Had he presented his hypothesis in a more grounded manner he'd come off as less insane. For example something like this:
"The traditional view of the Tukhachevsky Affair is that the accused were innocent victims of Stalinist tyranny and that the plot they were accused being part of didn't exist. I would argue otherwise: that the evidence suggests there was a very real plot and that all of the accused can be tied to it, but you don't have to take my word for it. In this book we're going to examine the evidence surrounding the Tukhachevsky Affair in detail and the context surrounding this evidence while I make the case that it proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the Tukhachevsky Conspiracy was a real threat to the Soviet government and that the subsequent actions of the Soviet government were in line with a measured security response."
^This is way more digestible for the average person than what Furr ultimately wrote. More analytical; less fanatical. I still personally don't agree with starting like this and would prefer an opening that simply questions the veracity of the claims and then invites the reader to look at the evidence with them as I think that makes the arguments more convincing but just doing it like this is a vast improvement over Furr's original opening in the Foreword & Introduction + the slog that was Chapters 1, 3, and 4.
Do not get me wrong, I am not justifying his strange introduction (if what you say is true); I just thought that the structure was not the primary issue at hand when talking about his work. Marxists know that structures of any sort are not meant to be applied mechanically.
It is unfortunate that it has some useful aspects to it, because it seems like the majority of the work is irrelevant to the issue.