ABSTRACT
Among the successive cohorts of Western students of Stalinism, there do not appear to have been any historical revisionists of the calibre of those who, like David Irving, questioned the reality of Hitler’s Holocaust, provoking a storm of violent controversy and ostracism from the scholarly community. However, several critics have discerned an apologetic tendency in earlier revisionist literature, when the eagerness to rewrite Soviet history ‘from below’ led to a downplaying of the more coercive, malign aspects of Stalinist rule so strongly stressed by traditionalists. The ‘new cohort’ saw them as politically biased. The charge was not wholly unfounded, but in refuting it, certain enthusiasts were inclined to throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water.
