an EXAMINATION of the FALSEHOODS in BLOODLANDS

Blood Lies - Index 

Since Bloodlands is not an attempt to give a truthful account of the events it discusses, it is something else: an attempt to convince the reader - including the academic reader - that it is a truthful account. In other words: Bloodlands is a work of propaganda disguised as a work of historical research or a summary account of works of historical research. Bloodlands is a book that intends to mislead its readers, and it has been very successful.

The main reason for its success is what I have called "the anti-Stalin" paradigm." Bloodlands tells its readers what they were, broadly speaking, already "knew" - that is, thought they knew: that Stalin and the Soviet leadership were morally evil people who deliberately murdered millions of people and so were, broadly speaking, like the Nazis. Bloodlands fills out the paradigm of "Stalin and the Soviets as evil" with examples and scholarly-looking documentation much as hot air fills out a balloon.

In addition to the techniques of scholarly misrepresentation and misdirection, other factors are involved. Chief among them is the power of the anti-Stalin paradigm. This epidemic of self-imposed blindness exists because there is not a powerful institution that is devoted to the pursuit of historical truth. The historical profession is supposed to be such an institution. But it is not, at least as regards Soviet history of the Stalin period. In this field falsehood is rewarded as long as it serves anticommunist purposes while the truth is discouraged or penalized when, as is usually the case, it does not serve those purposes.

The techniques of misdirection employed in Bloodlands are not original or sophisticated. Once they have been pointed out they appear almost transparent. But they have fooled dozens of reviewers, including academic reviewers. At the time I am writing this (May 2014) I have yet to find a single reviewer who has identified even one of the dozens of falsifications in Snyder's book.

If someone were to write a book accusing the American government of atrocities on the scale of those Snyder falsely attributes to Stalin and the Soviet leadership, we can be certain that many scholars would check every statement and examine all the evidence. That up to now no one has done this is, no doubt, due in part to the fact that in Bloodlands Snyder is simply telling people that which they have assumed to be true all along.

What we have done in the present book is simply to apply to Snyder's fact-claims, accusations, and allegations against Stalin, the Soviet leadership, and pro-Soviet forces in Bloodlands the skeptical attitude that any careful reviewer of a book alleging crimes by the United States government and leadership would adopt. The result is devastating to Snyder's book........

Within the anti-Stalin paradigm, a number of rhetorical techniques of misdirection are employed in Bloodlands. In an earlier work I called the different kinds of falsification in Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" a "typology of prevarication." (1) In that work I was able to show that what Khrushchev stated in this infamous speech was false. Because Russian authorities still keep most primary source documentation of the events of the high politics of the 1930s top secret, in most cases I did not have enough evidence to discover what really happened - only enough to prove that more than 40 "revelations" made by Khrushchev in that speech are deliberate lies and that twenty more are false, probably but not demonstrably deliberate falsehoods.

In The Murder of Sergei Kirov I discussed the studies by Matthew Lenoe, Ã…smund Egge, and Alla Kirilina. I discover that these scholars had tortured the available evidence in ordered to reach the only conclusion congruent with the anti-Stalin paradigm: that Kirov's assassin, Leonid Nikolaev, was a "lone gunman" and that Stalin fabricated the criminal case against everyone else. In the case of Kirov's murder we do have enough evidence to prove that those persons convicted of the murder by the Soviet court in December 19734 were indeed guilt. But I did not give a summary or theoretically-informed account of the errors and methods of misdirection that these prior scholars used.

In the case of Bloodlands I think such an account is warranted. The fact-claims against Stalin and the Soviets are so universally false, and the failure of expert reviewer to notice this so complete, that were are forced to admit that the techniques of falsification in Bloodlands have been successful. If they have fooled the experts they will also fool the general reader. These techniques of falsification are simple in principle. But they are only disclosed as simple in practice if one studies them closely.

The widespread acceptance of the anti-Stalin paradigm discourages any attempt to verify fact-claims that are convenient to that paradigm, since the process of verification dismantles the paradigm itself. A review of the techniques of misdirection in Bloodlands may prove helpful in warning the reader against naive acceptance of the anti-Stalin paradigm. Under its controlling influence every piece of evidence is bent to fit it, while everything that does not fit it is ignored or discarded.

In the ideologically-charged field that is Soviet history of the Stalin period no accusation of wrongdoing against Stalin, the Soviet leadership, or pro-Soviet forces, no matter what its source, should ever be accepted as true unless it has been thoroughly verified. The sooner this fact is generally recognized, and the sooner the practice of verifying everything that "fits" the anti-Stalin paradigm is taken seriously, the better for those who wish to discover the truth

Methods of Falsification in Bloodlands

Avoidance of objectivity takes different specific forms. There are many different ways to make fact claims without evidence.

Technique Description

Characteristics

Example (2)

Begging the Question (BQ)

Petitio principii: Assuming that which is to be proven.

"The mass starvation of 1933 was the result of Stalin's first Five-Year Plan, implemented between 1928 and 1932." (Bloodlands Ch.3)

Bias of Omission (BO)

Rely on the readers' ignorance.

"Poland never surrendered, but hostilities came to an end on 6 October 1939." (Bloodlands Ch.4); 'Snyder Barely Refers to the Real Genocide: the "Volhynian Massacres."' (Ch.13)

Fabrication (FA)

Statements that are anticommunist bias only, without any evidence at all.

"'Stalin's First Commandment": Another Snyder Fabrication.' (Ch.3)

The Big Lie (BL)

Repetition of the same falsehood over and over to give the reader the impression that it has previously been established as true.

The USSR and Nazi were "allies"; Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was an agreement to partition Poland; "joint invasion" of Poland; USSR and Nazi Germany wanted to eliminate "Polish elite." (passim)

Communism - Nazism (CN)

Miss no chance to compare if not to equate them. Communism is to be linked with Nazism whenever possible regardless of logic.

Often the attempts to bracket the two together is awkward, even bizarre, and sometimes seemingly irrational. The rationality lies in the BL repetition. The aim to get the reader used to the comparison as though it were a natural one. 

Nazi actions are blamed on the Soviets whenever possible. 

Communist motives must be made to appear as similar as possible to the Nazis motives. 

GULAG prisoners were "slave labor" (Bloodlands, Ch.3); 'Did "Soviet Cruelty" Lead to Support for Nazism?'(Ch.4); 'Snyder Terms Stalin's Anti-Hitler Move a 'Pro'-Hitler Move.' (Ch.7); 'Snyder: Noting a Person's Nationality Is "Not So Very Different From" Nazism'(Ch.7); 'Snyder Equates Nazi Imperialism with Soviet Anti-Imperialism'(Ch.9); 'Did Soviet Partisans Cause Nazi Atrocities?' (Ch.11)

Phony Citation (PC)

The work or works cited as evidence in support of a fact-claim do not in reality support it.

'The Lie that Stalin Spoke of an "Alliance" with Hitler.' (Ch.8); 'Snyder Falsifies Stalin's Words." (Ch.14)

Anti-Semitism (AS)

In Bloodlands this trope services the CN trope. 

The Nazis were anti-Semitic so Stalin and the Soviet leadership must be shown to have been anti-Semitic as well. 

This is impossible, so fabrications (FA) and Phony Citations (PC) must be employed.

'The Lie That Stalin was Anti-Semitic' (Ch.14); 'Did Stalin's Daughter Overhear Stalin "Covering Up" Solomon Mikhoels' Murder?' (Ch.14); 'Anything to Make Stalin Appear Anti-Semitic? Snyder Falsifies the Drafter Letter' (Ch.14)

Numbers Game (NG)

This trope also services the CN trope. For the Communism-Nazism/Stalin-Hitler comparison to work it must be asserted that the Soviets murdered very large numbers of people, since the Nazis did so.

'More False Numbers of "Victims"' (Ch.13)

Anti-Communist Scholarship (AC)

Often the PC is taken from secondary sources by other anti-communist scholars.

A great many of Snyder's false fact-claims are taken from AC scholars, such as these: 'Snyder's "Fundamental" Source - A Hitler Supporter' (Ch.4); 'Snyder Falsifies the Nalibocki Massacre' (Ch.11)

False or Falsified Quotation (FQ)

This is a hybrid category. Sometimes there is no real source for the quotations at all, which makes it a special kind of FA - a fabricated quotation. Sometimes a genuine quotation is cited incorrectly. The quotation really says and means something else.

'Were "Women Routinely Raped, Robbed of Food"?' (Ch.2); 'Snyder: "Half a Million Youngsters in Watchtowers".' (Ch.4)

Psychologizing (PS)

Snyder claims that Stalin was "thinking" something.

"'Stalin's New Malice.'" (Ch.3); 'Snyder Reads Stalin's Mood.' (Ch.7); 'Snyder Claims That Stalin Hated All Poles.' (Ch.7)

Anti-Communist Statements that Do Not Prove Anything but "Sound Bad" (SB)

'Stalin's "Personal Politics."' (Ch.3)

First-Person Accounts (FP)

(See discussion below.)

First-Person Accounts (FP)

A final category that does not lend itself to tabular presentation is that of the first-person account. Snyder uses them a lot in Bloodlands. The deception comes when, as in Bloodlands, they are used as though they can establish an historical fact.

The problems of first-person accounts are as follows:

* They are normally collected long after the event. But memory is a creative process. Memories change, often to fit ideological assumptions made later in the person's life. Such memories are useless as historical evidence, even as evidence of the personal experience of the individual whose account it is.

* The principle testis unus, testis nullus applies in all but exceptional cases. One testimony is not sufficient to establish that an event occurred.

* First-person testimony is often collected in a biased, unrepresentative way. For example, the book by Kovalenko from which Snyder took his story of "Petro Veldii" was compiled by selecting 1000 personal accounts of the famine of 1932-33 from among 6000 collected, but only "negative" accounts were published.

First-person accounts are often used for their emotional appeal. The appeal to emotion has long been recognized as a rhetorical strategy to disarm rational attempts at evaluating evidence: in short, as a technique of propaganda. Snyder uses purported first-hand accounts of the famine. Even without source criticism - some of these accounts come from the works of Nazi collaborators - such accounts are not evidence that any specific event actually occurred. The "Petro Veldii" story in Chapter One of Bloodlands that we examine in the Introduction is a good example of this.

Analysis of the Prevarications in Bloodlands

The international success of a work as corrupt as Bloodlands requires explanation. How can a book that is largely composed of demonstrable, provable falsehoods have been published? Once published, how can it be praised by newspaper and magazine reviewers and by professional historians whose job it is to critically examine historical studies? How can a work utterly lacking in integrity be published in the hundreds of thousands of copies, garnered awards in several countries, and be translated into dozens of languages?

Part of the answer lies in the historical role of pseudo-scholarship as propaganda for anti-communist purposes. The demonization of Soviet history dates back to the revolution itself. Already in 1920 Walter Lippmann and Charels Merz showed how the New York Times, newspaper "of record" then as today, "reported" the triumph of the Whites and the defeat of the Reds numerous times, always falsely. Lippmann and Merz concluded that the reporters had not deliberately lied. Rather they had reported not what they saw but what they and their bosses wanted to see. (3) The Times' reporters included Walter Duranty, later to be attacked for being "insufficiently anticommunist" when in the 1930s he insisted on reporting only what he saw or knew for a fact rather than what he had not witnessed.

Bloodlands was published by Basic Books, a commercial rather than an academic publisher. Academic presses require that manuscripts submitted for publication be vetted by academic specialists in the field. This does not guarantee that falsehoods will be caught and that standards of evidence routine in other areas of history will be observed. Nevertheless, I suspect that at least some of the more glaring falsifications in Bloodlands might well have been recognized as such by an academic review - unless the reviewers had been selected more for their anticommunist fervor than for excellence of research.

For example, there is a good chance that academic reviewers would not have permitted Snyder's account of the fraudulent "Holodomor" to pass without at least some qualification. And the millions of "deliberate murders" of the Holodomor fraud are essential to Snyder's Stalin-Hitler/Communist-Nazi comparison; without them he would have had no book. But academic vetting is not necessary in commercial publishing.

The many awards Bloodlands has garnered from newspapers and magazines are understandable. All these publications are dogmatically anticommunist. Indeed, some of them, like the WSJ and "Reason Magazine," stand politically on the far right. But when it comes to hostility to Stalin there is often little or no difference along the continuum from left-liberal to neoconservative. And it is publicity and promotion from these publications that determine commercial success; hence, "non-fiction bestseller," etc. The author and his publisher are making a lot of money! Not a careful search for the truth but profit is the goal of commercial publication, and anticommunist bias is not a barrier but a requirement for mass commercial success.

Bloodlands has not been greeted by scholars with the criticism it deserves. On the contrary, many academic specialists in the field of East European history have praised the book. Although, as the reader of the present study realizes, Bloodlands is composed of little except falsehoods concerning the actions of Soviet leaders and Soviet and communist actors, these academic reviewers have managed to miss virtually all of them.

Three "Review Forums" on Bloodlands

As illustration of this fact we here consider the first three "review forums" in professional historical journals that Snyder himself listed on his web page as of April 2014. (4) Together they represent considered responses to Bloodlands by thirteen prominent academic scholars.

Book reviews and "review forums" are of some value if the participants really are expert in the same field as the subject of the book. But in the present case only two of the thirteen, Hiroaki Kuromiya and Jörg Baberowski, are specialists in Soviet history of the Stalin period. Both of them are on the far right of even the anticommunist scholarly spectrum; both are passionately anticommunist and make no pretense at objectivity. Baberowski has nothing of interest to say at all. Kuromiya is the only one of the thirteen who questions whether the Soviet famine of 1932-33 was in fact deliberate mass murder. But he does not draw the obvious conclusions: that if the famine was not mass murder the whole framework of Snyder's book collapses. The other twelve all accept without question Snyder's importation of the Ukrainian nationalist myth of the "Holodomor." None of them seems to know that the major Western studies of the famine of 1932-33 by Mark Tauger, Stephen Wheatcroft, and R.W. Davies, even exist. One of them even misspells the clearly unfamiliar term.

Kuromiya is also the only one of the thirteen to point out Snyder's gross error about Japanese military intentions after 1937. (5) Aside from him none of these scholars questions a single one of Snyder's fact-claims. None of them, Kuromiya included, checks even one of Snyder's fact-claims to verify whether it is based on primary source evidence or whether that evidence in fact supports what Snyder claims in his text.

All these scholars (with the exception of the two mild demurrers by Kuromiya) simple accept every one of Snyder's assertions or fact-claims about the actions of Stalin, the Soviet leadership, and communist forces. Yet, as the present study demonstrates, every one of these fact-claims in false. All of these scholars repeat the verbiage about Soviet or Stalinist "mass murders". Yet as the present study has shown, the evidence is clear that the only mass murder, the terrible Ezhovshchina, was not sanctioned by Stalin or the Soviet leadership. Not one of these scholars seems to know anything about this event. Not one of them knows of the long-standing scholarly debate over the Katyn massacre. And so on.

Kuromiya and Baberowski aside, the rest of the reviewers - eleven out of thirteen - are specialists in Nazism, or in the Holocaust of Jews, or in Eastern Europe. They show profound ignorance about the historiography of the Soviet Union during the 1930s. They are not in the least qualified to judge whether Snyder's fact-claims about Soviet history are accurate or not. Of course they themselves knew this. But none of them was forthright enough to admit it.

Whether knowledge about the history of the Stalin era or not, all of these scholars could have done what any reviewer should do. They could have selected a few of Snyder's assertions about Soviet history and then checked Snyder's footnotes to see whether those references supported what SNyder claims they support. If unable to read Polish or Ukrainian they could have asked help from colleagues. This is elementary, the kind of thing graduate students are trained to do; what Ph.D. students regularly do in the course of researching for their dissertations.

Moreover, if it is not done then the readership is being deliberately misled. These scholars are giving the impression that they can approve or certify Snyder's research when they know themselves they are in no position to do so. They claim they have found Snyder's research to be good - most of them say as much - while in reality they are taking Snyder's book "on faith." But they don't admit this.

But this seldom happens. Book reviews "count" little in a scholar's career so few scholars spend much time on them. If the book is on a subject the scholar knows very well then their independent judgement can indeed be of value. But when, as in this case, the book is on a subject that the scholar knows little or even nothing about, their judgement is worthless. The scholar should either recuse themselves or write only about those aspects of the book they are expert on and openly admit that they do not know enough about the other parts of the book to have any opinion about them. But none of the reviewers in these three "review forums" were forthright enough to do this. Therefore their endorsements of Snyder's book are dishonest. They mislead their readers. (6)

To understand how this can happen we must briefly examine the system of anticommunist pseudo-scholarship on Soviet history of the Stalin period that not only permits but lavishly rewards dishonest works like Bloodlands.

Objectivity

In any field of study it is essential that the researcher determine to be objective from the outset of his study. History is no different. The historian must make every effort to survey all the primary sources that bear upon his subject, and all the secondary sources that study this evidence regardless of whether these secondary sources reflect the same biases, preconceived ideas, or values as his own.

Since objectivity is, among other things, an attitude of distrust of the self and of one's own preconceived ideas and biases, the historian must compensate for their own limitations by trying especially hard to give a supportive reading to primary and secondary sources whose tendency is opposed to their own biases and preconceived ideas. At the same time they must determine to be especially suspicious of that evidence and those works of scholarship that tend to confirm or agree with their own biases, to counteract their natural tendency to look with special favor upon statements that reflect their own views. (7)

In their historical practice, the historian must observe the tenets of objective research form the outset, and even before. If the historian does not begin with a determination to find the truth no matter whose ox is gored, ready at every moment to discover a truth that they find disillusioning, their research is doomed. They will never stumble across the truth by accident along the way. Moreover, if an historian does not begin from a determination to discover the truth we must ask the question: What, then, is their purpose in writing their book? If they are not out to discover the truth and report it to their readers, what are they doing? (8)

Snyder ignores every tenet of historical objectivity. Therefore, no one should be surprised that his book is devoid of historical truth. It could not be otherwise. (9)

Anticommunist Scholarship

Snyder's determined flouting of objectivity would be of little consequence if it were an exception. Bloodlands and similar works would be rejected during the vetting process and not be published. Those works that for whatever reason managed to evade the vetting process and be published anyway would be quickly critiqued, their errors, carelessness, and deliberate dishonesty identified and exposed. Negative reviews would warn potential readers away. This is how the system of scholarly and semi-popular reviewing is supposed to work.

But in reality it does not work this way. Scholarship on the Stalin period in the Soviet Union is constrained by an informal but strict code of "political correctness." Stalin must be depicted as a moral monster and the Soviet Union during his time as a place of government-sponsored mass murder and repression. No substantive deviation from this formula is tolerated.

Only rarely can one find a refutation of even the most absurd accusations of crimes by Stalin. In his 2010 study that concluded that Stalin did not have a hand in the murder of Sergei Kirov in Leningrad on December 1, 1934 Matthew Lenoe felt compelled to write a two-page profession of his anticommunist and anti-Stalin convictions. Lenoe admits that he did so lest someone suspect him of being "pro-Stalin" for rejecting an interpretation which had been abandoned by Soviet and Russian experts for decades and for which there had never been any evidence in the first place.

Even this is an exception. Claims that Stalin committed some crime, no matter how poorly supported by evidence, are typically passed over in silence if really absurd and otherwise accepted and even repeated, as Snyder does many times in Bloodlands.

In history of the Stalin period a kind of "Gresham's Law" prevails where "bad scholarship drives out the good." When good scholarship is produced it is carefully written so as not to contradict any tenets of anti-Stalinism that the researcher thinks may be an inviolable part of the anti-Stalin paradigm.

Good research is being done in the field of Stalin-era Soviet history. But it is typically confined to the close examination of primary sources, especially when newly-available sources are used. Research that is narrowly focused on specific events, places, and time periods can be very revealing. Even when marred by bias, research that reproduces new primary sources can be valuable because flawed interpretation can be discarded and the texts of the primary sources themselves appropriated for more objective research.

An anticommunist scholarly environment or "industry" has been created where "scholars" churn out anticommunist falsehoods and then cite each other's falsehoods as evidence that the falsehoods are true. Primary sources are distorted by misinterpretation or ignored entirely. The "scholars" or academic practitioners in this "industry" assume in their writings that it is not primary source evidence and its interpretation, but the consensus of anticommunist researchers, that establishes a statement as "true".

Snyder follows this practice with enthusiasm. Bloodlands is a product of it. Snyder rarely cites primary sources at all. When he does, he gets them wrong. For the most part Snyder cites secondary sources by "scholars" of the anticommunist "industry". This produces a body of anticommunist pseudo-scholarship based upon bias alone - that is, upon ignorance.

In addition to falsehood this system reproduces ignorance. Anticommunist scholars inevitably become lazy when no one criticizes their research because it has the "correct" anticommunist tendency or "line." Why worry about the truth if what matters is not objectivity in skillful analysis and interpretation of primary source evidence but in striking the right anticommunist tone? why bother to do the hard, time-consuming work of real research, of discovering the truth, when the path to academic success is to repeat anticommunist assertions without regard to the evidence?

Our study of Bloodlands has disclosed that Snyder is not only biased. He is also ignorant about much or most of the history of which he poses as an expert. His readers should not assume that Snyder has worked hard to discover the truth and then gone on to construct deliberate lies in order to disguise this truth. The reverse is much more likely: that Snyder has no idea what the truth is because he has never tried to find it. He has mastered the anticommunist position or "line" on many issues, and this can be got from reading the works of a limited number of recognized anticommunist "scholars" without troubling oneself about primary sources or real research of any kind.

Footnotes

(1) Khrushchev Lied, Chapter 10, 137-158

(2) Chapter references are to the chapters in the present book unless Bloodlands is specifically mentioned.

(3) Walter Lippmann and Chatles Merz. "A Test of the News." Supplement to The New Republic August 4, 1920. It is available online at: https://archive.org/details/LippmannMerzATestoftheNews (Accessed May 5 2014)

(4) At: http://timothysnyder.org/books-2/bloodlands/review-forums/

(5) See the discussion in Chapter Five of the present book.

(6) WEB EDITOR'S NOTE: For some reason the pronouns in this paragraph and the following paragraphs were mostly feminized (with one masculine pronoun). Snyder is referenced as a "she" at one point. Since this appears to be a mistake I've edited pronouns to the third-person.

(7) See above.

(8) See above.

(9) See above.