Describing Grover Furr as a "model scholar" seems very charitable. His academic career has been as a medieval literature historian, not a specialist in Soviet history, which he does not teach. While he has dabbled in Soviet history, he hasn't really done this in an academic, scholarly, professional way.
For example, many of his works are published through Erythros Press, which is a Marxist press, not a scholarly or academic press. Similarly, Red Star Press is a tiny Marxist-Leninist press, not an academic or scholarly press focused on history.
His journal articles are similarly not really history focused, for example he published in 'Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice' and 'Theory and Struggle' rather than a history journal. A quick search on Jstor returns one article by Furr in a history journal to do with Russia, and it was published in 1986.
He is not engaged with by other historians. Almost none of his works have any signficiant citations by others, and often the only person to cite his books are he himself. See, for example: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=814778934389669065&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en
I would certainly respect his Soviet history work more if he engaged with Soviet historians, but he doesn't. It isn't that hard to get a book published by Palgrave Macmillan which is at least somewhat reputable. Does he choose to use tiny fringe presses because they have less scrutiny? Is he more driven by ideological fervour than by being a scholarly historian?
Some may say I'm doing an appeal to authority or dismissing him out of hand, but a LOT of people write a LOT of crap about LOTS of things (I'm one of them haha). When someone's website looks like the Time Cube guy's (https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/) I really don't mind deferring to experts who spend lifetimes researching and debating a topic on whether it is worth reading, there is plenty of debate in Russian historiography (it isnt like you can't find debates between Wheatcroft and Davies, Shelia Fitzpatrick, etc and Snyder or Norman Naimark. You can get respectfully engaged with histories from the left (China Meiville's October sprigs to mind as a recent one I've read). To be as fringe and ignored as Furr indicates to me you're doing something wrong. To choose to read someone so fringe and ignored and who chooses to avoid academic engagement also indicates that someone may be looking for something other than good history.
