Dear MLG friends:
My colleague Vladimir Bobrov notifies me from Moscow today that my book is listed on the "top 10 sellers" of the large Moscow publisher, "Algoritm".
It is also #6 in the "Russian history" list at Moscowbooks, a major Moscow bookstore that also has an online business.
http://www.moscowbooks.ru/catalog/theme.asp?id=++++4F+++&offset=0
*My book -- in Russian only at this point -- gives the evidence to prove that Nikita Khrushchev lied in his infamous "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress in February, 1956. I investigated every one of the sixty-one allegations against Stalin and Lavrentii Beria Khrushchev made in that speech.
These allegations are often referred to as "revelations", as though they were "the truth."
In my book, and using documents from former Soviet archives now published in Russia, I show that every one of those allegations is false. Khrushchev lied -- and did so knowingly.
Of course this fact means that the history of the Stalin years in the USSR that we have all been taught, is quite false.
One might call this false view the "Trotsky-Khrushchev-Cold War- Gorbachev" version. I'm sure we are all familiar with it. *
Here's the page:
http://www.algoritm-kniga.ru//index.php? option=com_alphacontent§ion=4&cat=18&Itemid=38
The books are listed alphabetically by last name of author. In Russian as in Greek "F" comes towards the end of the alphabet, so my book is 3rd from last here.
This isn't the "top 10 in history", but the "top 10 overall." Other books on this list include books on Putin; on ancient Moscow; on the conversion of Russia to Christianity; on Mikhail Bulgakov and just who the "Margarita" of his book _The Master and Margarita_ might have been; etc.
No one is more surprised by the sales of this book than I am. Vladimir informs me that the publisher is not surprised, so presumably they have done some promotion that is invisible to me.
Vladimir also informs me that there is some surprise that the book was written by an American. There are quite a lot of books by American authors on Soviet history and translated into Russian. But they are all negative, strongly anticommunist, anti-Soviet, and anti-Stalin -- "Cold War" stuff. So this one breaks the pattern.
Vladimir tells me he replies that Khrushchev's 1956 speech has been so pounded into the heads of Soviet citizens, and now Russians, that no one questions it any more. (That's not _quite_ true, of course).
* * * * *
*Please ask your local and academic libraries to order copies! *
Virtually all academic libraries, and a great many public libraries, have Russian collections. There are a huge number of Russians in the USA now.
Here's the URL for the American distributor Eastview. Acquisitions librarians usually prefer to order from a US-based distributor. Eastview is in Minneapolis.
http://www.eastview.com/xq/ASP/sku=796702B/f_locale=/Ferr/Grover/ Moskva/Russia/Russian/qx/russian/books/product.asp
The title of the book is "Antistalinskaia Podlost". The author is given as "Ferr, Grover." That's me (in Russian).
Thanks to all those MLG'ers who have emailed me with their best wishes. I offer the same to all of you!
Sincerely,
Grover Furr Montclair State University