Thanks for all the remarks! Here are a few replies. I’ll be brief.
Mike Ely wrote:
“Give us a short, simple list of your evidence for this global Trotsky-Bukharin-Nazi conspiracy. You can’t because it didn’t exist.”
Either you have not studied the materials or you don’t remember them.
There were a series of inter-related conspiracies. There’s a huge amount of evidence of this. Some of this evidence is unquestionable – e.g. Trotsky’s and his son’s correspondence about the “bloc” – their word – of Zinovievites, Trotskyites, and others. But there’s lots more too.
Re: Bukharin: he never claimed to have been in touch with Germans or Japanese. But he was for sure involved in a terrorist conspiracy.
See Furr and Bobrov, “Nikolai Bukharin’s First Statement of Confession in the Lubianka”, at http://clogic.eserver.org/2007/Furr_Bobrov.pdf for the evidence just about Bukharin that was available a few years back.
There’s lots more evidence that does not directly concern Bukharin, who was only one figure among many.
We have lots of evidence about the Military conspiracy and its interrelationship with the other conspiracies. For non-Soviet evidence of this see the late Alvin Coox’s two-part article on Genrikh Liushkov and the Japanese in _Journal of Slavic Military Studies_, 1998.
Full references for this and other useful stuff is in my article, “Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan”, at http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf
Mike Ely wrote:
“He is trying to prove something which is false, and there is mountains of evidence of many kinds about what actually happened.”
There is NO evidence that the Moscow Trials were frame-ups. None! ALL the evidence we have supports the hypothesis that these conspiracies were genuine.
Mike Ely wrote:
“For those interested in the actual history of this period, I would urge you to read J. Arch Getty’s book “Road to Terror”…”
Getty wrote this book 13-14 years ago. We have a huge amount more evidence, more documents from former Soviet archives, now than he had then.
Read it! You’ll learn something. And you will find nothing that disagrees with what I have written.
PatrickSMcNally wrote:
“The record of Bukharin’s performance at the trial shows that he attempted to give way on certain points while refusing to concede on others,…”
That’s true. But this isn’t:
“…and this was done in a way which strongly suggested a coerced confession.”
Had he been “coerced” he’d have confessed to everything. Instead he fights like hell on some points while confessing to other capital offenses.
Read the evidence in our article (cited above).
Bill Martin: Thanks for your sensible and supportive remarks! I don’t recall meeting you, but hope to have the opportunity before long.
One point: You wrote:
“Prof. Furr, on the other hand, at least contributes to our understanding of the complexity of the Stalin period, and to an understanding that there is more to what happened than the capriciousness of a one-person dictatorship.”
Stalin was not a “dictator” in any sense of the word. Wheatcroft, one of the very best historians of this period around, wrote an article almost a decade ago calling Stalin’s collective style of working “Team Stalin”.
“Dictator” is simply a shibboleth of respectability – you _have_ to say it, in order to be “acceptable” to anticommunists and Trotskyists.
PatrickSMcNally wrote:
“But the purges were an insane outburst of paranoia…”
No, they were not! You are ‘begging the question” – assuming that which must be proven.
You are voicing the “respectable anticommunist / Trotskyist viewpoint”. It’s completely wrong, and there has never been any evidence to support it.
PSM wrote:
“Stalin’s paranoid visions of Nazi agents everywhere…”
True nonsense! That there were, in fact, a large number of foreign agents in the USSR, is acknowledged by bourgeois historians. For example: Jeffrey Burds, in _Journal of Contemporary History_ 42 (2007), 267 ff.
“Furr’s thesis is only of utility as an example of how Leftists need to wary of getting sucked into a wish to confirm their old biases off of doctored versions of the past. That can’t lead anywhere towards the future, and a comparison with Creationism is entirely appropriate.”
PSM is not familiar with the research on these topics, but pretends that he is.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
Anticommunist historians (and Trotskyist historians) do little but lie about Soviet history and Stalin.
Meanwhile, they all admire each other – yes, the anticommunists cite the Trots respectfully all the time, and the Trots return the favor. All are interested in anticommunist, and specifically in anti-Stalin lies.
Parallel with Mao: the same kind of thing is going on re: China and Mao. There’s a leapfront contact to “prove” Mao “killed” 20, 30 40, 45 million people in the famine, not to mention elsewhere.
The reality is this: I have been investigating “anti-Stalin” allegations intensively for the past decade. To this point, NOT A SINGLE ONE of them can be verified, and most can be DISproven.
That’s the situation. Obviously, many people on the “Left” find this inacceptable, intolerable.
To them I say: Think again! You are never, ever going to build a movement for a better society by basing yourself on anticommunist, anti-Stalin, pro-Trotsky and pro-capitalist lies.
The Espresso Stalinist 
I quite honestly don’t understand the shitstorm, why would Mike being a Maoist accuse Stalin of various actions when the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin-Mao line is to be upheld in Maoism, along with Stalin’s contributions that are apart of this line. More or less this appears to be each head of Marxism-Leninism being Mao appearing again.
The reason being they do not care for communism in the slightest. They have renounced the need for a vangaurd which they treat as some arbitrary dogma rather than historical experience that it actually is. You can see this in a few of their articles : http://kasamaproject.org/page/12/
http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/17/dead-ends-road-maps-building-a-new-socialist-movement/
http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/01/a-questioning-of-lenins-theory-of-imperialism/
http://kasamaproject.org/2011/03/19/bring-the-ruckus-neither-vanguard-nor-network/
http://kasamaproject.org/2011/02/21/ok-what-the-hell-is-the-kasama-project/
Indeed, Rob. Kasama in fact treat ALL of Leninism as an arbitrary dogma; one wonders if they think breathing is dogmatic too!
‘one wonders if they think breathing is dogmatic too!’
I wouldn’t doubt this.
You cannot be serious. Mr. Furr argues that ALL of the trial verdicts were right, and the trials themselves implicated Bukharin as a foreign agent. Andrey Vyshinsky accused Bukhain and Rykov of “connected with a number of foreign intelligence services whom they regularly served.” The trial clearly argued that “on the instructions of enemy of the people L. Trotsky… Bukharin, Ryjkov and Yagoda…entered into direct relations with representatives of foreign states hostile to the U.S.S.R. and negotiated with them regarding the forms of assistance to be given to the aggressors in event of their attack upon the Soviet Union…” Which includes Nazi Germany and Japan.
This is clearly not supported by any bit of evidence outside the confessions at the trial and some documents which Furr connects with Trotsky without good reason. Pavel Sudoplatov’s so called “findings” on the Barcelona “May Days” are the most compelling evidence Furr has ever been able to garner. The main issue is this is reliant on the “German Military Court” under Nazi Germany, and in reality is from Nazi show trials. In 2008 the German Bundestag parliament pardoned those guilty of so-called “treason” meaning this evidence is flimsy at best. Furr argued the following:
« In the interests of the political situation the activities of Trotsky and his supporters abroad in the 1930s are said to have been propaganda only…. The Trotskyists were also involved in actions. Making us of the support of persons with ties to German military intelligence [the ‘Abwehr’] they organized a revolt against the Republican government in Barcelona in 1937. From Trotskyist circles in the French and German special intelligence services came “indicative” information concerning the actions of the Communist Parties in supporting the Soviet Union. Concerning the connections of the leaders of the Trotskyist revolt in Barcelona in 1937 we were informed by Schuze-Boysen… Afterward, after his arrest, the Gestapo accused him of transmitting this information to us, and this fact figured in his death sentence by the Hitlerite court in his case. »
Where he does his normal strategy of providing an allegation about situation (That the POUM uprising in Barcelona was orchestrated by the Nazis and Trotsky.) and claiming this is evidence. The proof is this quote:
« At the beginning of 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, the accused learned in his official capacity that a rebellion against the local red government in the territory of Barcelona was being prepared with the co-operation of the German Secret Service. This information, together with that of Pöllnitz, was transmitted by him to the Soviet Russian embassy in Paris. »
At best this is closer evidence that the POUM anarchists were working with the Nazis then Trotsky. It is also the most substantial proof of such ether. His next bit of evidence is “We have direct testimony from the German ambassador to Czechoslovakia that Hitler knew that high-ranking military figures in the USSR were preparing a coup d’état.” Which is not that hard to believe, but it doesn’t prove Trotsky was working along with Hitler and is simply a German ambassador saying Hitler “knew” that some “high-ranking military figures in the USSR were preparing a coup d’état.” Again its completely indirect evidence.
If anyone thinks such evidence supports the Moscow trial’s charges I would recommend they try and be critical of their own position.