UCC Academic in Censorship Dispute

Claims of McCarthyist censorship have been made against the Pierre Mendès Library at France’s Sorbonne University following a refusal to include a book by UCC academic Professor Geoffrey Roberts in its collection.The book, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War 1939-1953, was suggested for inclusion by one of the library’s members following the 2014 release of the French edition. However library directors declined the request, claiming that the book could not be included in its collection due to instances of bias.In a statement the library stated that, “The proposed work, although it was written by a university professor, does not in principle seem to us to display the historical and scientific neutrality required for it to be included on our shelves. Nor do the other books published by the same publishing house.”An online petition was launched in response to the refusal, with those supporting the books inclusion claiming that the Sorbonne University’s section on the history of Soviet Russia and the USSR is populated with anti-Soviet propaganda. In addition, the petition’s advocates also claim that several works which deny the Holocaust are currently available in the library, questioning how these books can claim to conform to the historical and scientific neutrality mentioned by the library.The petition further alleges that several prominent books focusing on Soviet Russia’s role in ending the Second World War are also being omitted in an act of censorship: “Important scholarly works published in French during the same period have not been acquired, such as those by Arno Mayer, Michael Carley and Alexander Werth, whose famous Russia at War 1941 to 1945, republished in French in 2011, remains absent.”Roberts, a former Head of History at UCC, hit back against the allegations, stating that “Stalin’s Wars is a highly partisan book. It argues strongly that Stalin was a very effective war leader who played a decisive role in the defeat of Hitler. It is also a work of scholarship that is based on all the available evidence and careful weighing of different arguments.“The book was originally published by Yale University Press in 2006. It has been translated into Chinese, Czech, German, Polish and Russian, as well as French. It has been extensively reviewed but not even its worst critics have questioned its scholarly integrity... All my books may be found in university libraries across the world. There can be no reason for an academic library to prohibit the purchase of Les Guerres de Staline, except political prejudice.”