UCC professor’s book on Josef Stalin is ‘banned’ from Sorbonne

A prominent professor of history at University College Cork has expressed surprise at a French university’s refusal to stock one of his books in their Paris library, allegedly due to its lack of “neutrality”.

An online petition addressed to the president of the Sorbonne University (Université Paris 1) claims that the University’s Pierre Mendès France Library declined a user’s request that it stock the French translated version of Prof Geoffrey Roberts’ book, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War 1939-1953.

The authors of the petition claimed that the library issued the following response to the request: “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.”