Originally published by Left Voice.

In the medieval era, guilt or innocence was often determined through trial by ordeal. One of the most notorious forms occurred when the accused was bound by their hands and feet, then cast into the water. If he sank, then he was presumed innocent; if he floated then he was found guilty. In other words, you were damned either way.

Unlike the modern justice system, trial by ordeal was not based on reason or evidence, but on the supernatural and the irrational. The governing rationale was that an all-powerful, all-seeing, and just God would not allow the innocent to be falsely condemned but would intervene by a miracle to determine the truth. 

While trial by ordeal and other forms of medieval jurisprudence have been discarded in the modern world, they made a stunning reappearance in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. During the Great Terror of the 1930s, the Soviet leader launched a series of public show trials to eliminate potential opposition inside the Communist Party. The trials had all the hallmarks of a medieval inquisition by extorting confessions from leading Bolsheviks that they were guilty of crimes of sabotage, terrorism, and espionage in league with Leon Trotsky and fascist powers. Nor was the trial by ordeal missing from this Stalinist Terror. Pledges by former oppositionists accepting the party line were now viewed by Stalin as insincere double-dealing to hide their real guilt while confessions at trial would only serve to ensure severe punishment if not death. 

Longtime Stalin apologist – and (ironically) medieval literature professor – Grover Furr finds himself defending the Moscow Trials in his latest work, Khristian Rakovsky – Trotsky’s Japanese Spy (2025). This particular work focuses on the Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet official Christian Rakovsky (1873-1941). Rakovsky was one of the central defendants at the Third Moscow Trial of 1938 where he confessed to working with the Japanese Empire on behalf of Leon Trotsky. According to Furr, both Rakovsky and Trotsky were guilty as charged: “A great deal of evidence establishes Trotsky’s and Rakovsky’s guilt. There is no evidence that refutes it.” (13) However, a close examination reveals that not only does Furr lack any evidence, but he indulges in irrationalism and conspiratorial thinking. Like earlier Holy Inquisitors, he finds himself defending “trial by ordeal,” albeit replacing God with the General Secretary.

Stalin’s Holy Inquisitor

To make his case, Furr relies almost exclusively upon confessions from Rakovsky and others extracted from the Soviet NKVD. In fact, at least a third of the book consists of lengthy transcripts of interrogations and confessions. Contrary to the bulk of historical scholarship, Furr claims that Rakovsky and others freely confessed to the NKVD without any form of coercion or threats akin to an auto-da-fé: “No one has ever presented any evidence that the defendants’ testimony was compelled by torture or threats, or that the defendants were innocent of the crimes to which they confessed at trial. No one, ever.” (12)

In actuality, Furr ignores mountains of evidence regarding widespread abuses, threats, and torture conducted by the Soviet security forces. A cursory look at The Road to Terror (1999), edited by J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, provides ample details from the Soviet Archives. For instance, the NKVD authorized quotas for mass arrests in July 1937. This was part of an official police campaign in which thousands were arrested in a frenzied atmosphere of mass hysteria and false denunciations. The documents also show that torture was widely practiced by the NKVD. Moreover, the NKVD had orders with detailed instructions on the punishment and surveillance of families of suspects. It should also be noted that the historian Oleg Khlevniuk demonstrates in his history of the gulag that confessions were often falsified by the police. 

It stands to reason that Rakovsky and others in police custody could expect to be handled roughly. While it was true that the defendants at the Moscow Trials such as Rakovsky were not physically tortured — this would have made the frame-up too obvious — they were still clearly under threat. Even if Rakovsky was not physically harmed, his confessions occurred in a society where torture and mass arrests of innocent people were pervasive. Documentary proof of such practices casts doubts upon the reliability of confessions and the entire Soviet justice system. In other words, the bulk of Furr’s “evidence” is utterly worthless. 

Furthermore, Rakovsky’s confessions are useless without any form of corroboration. For example, let us assume that a suspect in police custody confesses to multiple murders. Afterward, the suspect shows the police where the bodies are buried. In this case, the confession’s validity is confirmed by revealing other corroborating evidence. A confession without corroborating evidence raises the immediate question that the accused were coerced to incriminate themselves. During the Moscow Trials, no corroborating evidence was offered to substantiate any of the confessions. Absent any corroborating evidence, we are left only with Furr’s faith in the immaculate integrity of the Soviet judicial system under Stalin and Vyshinsky.

Furr’s Burn BookLike a true Holy Inquisitor, Furr does not let a lack of proof dissuade him. He argues even if there is no evidence that this does not mean Trotsky and Rakovsky were not spies: “Suppose there were no evidence that Trotsky collaborated with Germany and Japan? Would that mean Trotsky did not collaborate? No, it wouldn’t.” (11) Furr claims that since Trotsky and Rakovsky were adept conspirators, they were careful to leave no evidence behind. So successful were they that no evidence for this wide-ranging conspiracy can be found in any archive in the world. That means the best proof for their conspiracy is that there is no proof at all. Based on Furr’s approach, we could equally conclude that Darth Vader and angels are real.Since he has no physical proof, Furr utilizes various forms of circumstantial evidence to make his case: “When there is enough of it, circumstantial evidence is the most powerful evidence there is.” (6) This usage of circumstantial evidence is where the Holy Inquisitor meets the high school mean girl. Throughout this text, all sorts of anecdotes, rumors, hearsay and gossip are thrown at the reader. Yet this is utterly irrelevant to the main point that Furr is making and merely serves to hide that he has no proof. In effect, Furr’s Khristian Rakovsky functions like the Burn Book from the film Mean Girls, a book filled with malicious gossip. Yet, unlike Furr, Regina George was more careful in substantiating the rumors in the Burn Book.Irrationalist ThinkingAt the heart of his methodology, Furr utilizes many logical fallacies to make his case. Those interested in a more thorough overview of Furr and logical fallacies should read my book,  In Stalin’s Shadow: Leon Trotsky and the Legacy of the Moscow Trials . For now, we will discuss the fallacy of Post Hoc. This is the idea that any event must have been caused by an earlier event since it happened later. When Furr claims that Trotsky’s successful prediction of the accusations that Stalin would later accuse both him and Rakovsky of, this was proof that Trotsky was actually guilty of conspiracy: 

Given all the evidence we now have, the best explanation both for Rakovsky’s confession that he agreed to work with Japanese intelligence and for Trotsky’s uncannily specific and accurate “prediction” that Rakovsky would admit this, is that it was true… We have also seen how Trotsky used the stratagem of “exposing the scheme in advance” many times. He did this in an attempt to ward off, in advance, accusations that he could be reasonably certain would be forthcoming. Trotsky could not prevent the Soviet prosecution from uncovering and exposing his, Trotsky’s, conspiratorial activities. What he could do was to claim that these accusations were so transparently false that he could even “predict” them in advance. (175 and 185)

Just because Trotsky made a prediction before an event came to pass does not mean he was working with the Japanese. There are no grounds for making this connection. By contrast, does Furr ever consider that Trotsky was just a perceptive observer of Stalin’s methods?

Double Dealer Like the Holy Inquisition, the Moscow Trials aimed to combat heresy, apostasy, and blasphemy that challenged the reigning orthodoxy. Just as the Devil could quote scripture for his own purpose, enemies of the people in the USSR practiced “double-dealing” or hiding their nefarious “Trotskyite-Fascist” aims while feigning Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. This is precisely what Furr accuses Rakovsky of doing when he gave up oppositional activity and accepted the party-line: “All the capitulators were dvulichnye – “two-faced,” hypocritical, and had “capitulated” in order to gain reinstatement in the Party where they could continue their conspiracy.” (29) For Furr, double dealing meant that Rakovsky now faced his own trial by ordeal – damned if he capitulates or shot if he confesses.

Yet why was Rakovsky lying when he capitulated and not when he confessed? If Rakovsky is a practiced liar, then how does Furr determine when he was telling the truth? Whereas medieval judges looked to God to determine guilt or innocence, Furr uses Stalin as the supreme arbiter on the truth. According to the General Secretary: “We have drawn a conclusion: Do not take former oppositionists at their word.” (38) This holy writ enables Furr to conclude that all protestations of loyalty by former oppositionists such as Rakovsky were just an elaborate ruse. To pronounce a verdict on Rakovsky’s trial by ordeal, Furr utilizes the approach of George Costanza from the sitcom Seinfeld, which we can paraphrase as follows: “Just remember, it’s not a lie if Stalin believes it.”

Yet Furr’s method for determining truth can only work if you accept Stalin’s word as gospel. To convince the rest of us, Furr is forced to invent more elaborate conspiracy theories to exculpate Stalin. In fact, he claims that NKVD chiefs Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov were actually enemies of the people in league with Trotsky (200). If Furr genuinely believes that the NKVD was led by enemies of the people who arrested and tortured innocent people, then shouldn’t this cast doubt on Rakovsky’s confession and the verdicts of the Moscow Trials? That is a question Furr cannot rationally answer since it blows apart his whole faith-based narrative.

Reject the Trial by OrdealLike all his other books, this one is poorly written, difficult to follow, and overly repetitive. There is no bibliography provided, not that it matters since Furr has no evidence beyond coerced confessions. Even as a Stalinist apologist, Furr does a poor job.

While Furr claims to be an objective researcher, he has more in common with a medieval judge than a scientific socialist. Throughout his work, the reader is bombarded with irrationalism, logical fallacies, and a conspiratorial mindset. Evidence is replaced by faith. Truth no longer corresponds with objective reality, but with the pronouncements of the Soviet General Secretary. What Furr has produced in all his work is pseudo-scholarship dressed up as science and truth. Marxists should recognize Furr’s work for the nonsense that it is.