u/PinkoMemeboy420 - originally from r/GenZhou
Most people who say he isn't either haven't bothered to actually look into his sources or just find the idea that maybe there's nuance to a guy like Stalin so preposterous that no amount of evidence will convince them.
I don't agree with his conclusions on everything, but the fact of the matter is he knows what he's taking about. The guy mostly uses Soviet archives to back up his points, and since he speaks Russian, he's able to translate documents that most anti Soviet historians have never bothered to look into. His critiques of popular anti communist historians like Stephen Kotkin are very thorough and convincing. People will say he's not creditable because he's a professor in Medieval literature, not a historian. Well, Noam Chomsky is a linguist, not a historian either, but nobody seems to care about that. People's real beef with him is they don't like his opinions. I've yet to see a real, convincing debunk of his work.