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The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
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The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression description
When it was first published in France in 1997, Le livre noir du Communisme touched off a storm of controversy that continues to rage today. Even some of his contributors shied away from chief editor Stéphane Courtois's conclusion that Communism, in all its many forms, was morally no better than Nazism; the two totalitarian systems, Courtois argued, were far better at killing than at governing, as the world learned to its sorrow. Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims. This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident, but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them. Courtois and his contributors document Communism's crimes in numbing detail, moving from country to country, revolution to revolution. The figures they offer will likely provoke argument, if not among cliometricians then among the ideologically inclined. So, too, will Courtois's suggestion that those who hold Lenin, Trotsky, and Ho Chi Minh in anything other than contempt are dupes, witting or not, of a murderous school of thought--one that, while in retreat around the world, still has many adherents. A thought-provoking work of history and social criticism, The Black Book of Communism fully merits the broadest possible readership and discussion. --Gregory McNamee |
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The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Exaggeration, half-truths, and propaganda, not supported by peer-reviewed studies
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A book that purports to present the "truth" and cites other books instead of peer-reviewed studies published in history journals is a joke.
Some of the most obvious falsehoods, which you can verify yourself in <> encyclopedias and in peer-reviewed history journals:
1) Mao Zedong "murdered" over 50 million in China. This bit of cold war
propaganda does not hold water on closer examination. Census data suggest that the drought in 1961-1962 may have resulted in 14-20 million more deaths in China than the average number of deaths during that period. The rightwingers have turned this natural disaster into a tale of premeditated mass murder of 50 million Chinese by the evil Mao. There is absolutely no evidence of mass executions by the Mao regime. If we are going to blame natural disasters on communism, then we should also blame the death toll from the Spanish flu in Europe on capitalism: by some estimates over 30 million people died from the Spanish flu in "free market" European countries in the late 1910s. There are millions of people dying from starvation and infectious disease in Africa; these poor countries include "free market" economies and socialist countries alike.
2) Stalin murdered over 20 million in the Soviet Union (some right wingers even make claims of 50 million). This is false, and the highest estimate that you will find in peer-reviewed literature is 11 million (see Europe-Asia Studies, September 1996, Vol 48, No 6, p 959-987: "Stalinism in Post-Communist Perspective: New Evidence on Killings, Forced Labour and Economic Growth in the 1930s" by Steven Rosefielde.) The US State Department profile of Russia puts the number at "millions killed" not 50 million killed by Stalin. Many other studies cite 1.5 million of documented executions by Stalin regime and make estimates of undocumented executions of up to 7 million (see Encyclopedia Encarta, and do a search in peer-reviewed history journals).
3) "Mass murder is unique to Nazis and Communists, and does not happen in free market economies". First of all, Nazi Germany was a capitalist country, with private property rights, private ownership of most means of production, market economy, ban on labor unions and strikes, and a ban on socialist and communist parties. The Hitler's party was called "National Socialist" because it started out as a worker party, but by the time it came to power it had little or nothing to do with socialism or workers, and was a right wing party married to big industrial interests. The name was not changed, and this misnomer continues to provide fodder to right wing ideologues, who would love to blame mass murder on socialism every chance they get. There are numerous examples of right wing dictatorships that murdered lots of their own people (e.g. Chile and Nazi Germany) and there is plenty of evidence of "free market" countries murdering millions of foreigners. Take the World War One, which is estimated to have resulted in over 15 million deaths in hostilities, and many more from disease. Take the wars waged by Western European capitalist countries in Africa and Asia in the late 19th/early 20th century and which created and maintained the huge colonial system. The total death toll in the dozens of wars related to the colonial system is estimated at 20 to 50 million. Finally, remember the Vietnam war which resulted in almost 3 million deaths among the Vietnamese (and around 100 thousand deaths of American troops).
The bottom line is: both communist governments and the so-called capitalist governments are responsible for killing of millions of people both at home and abroad. Neither "free market" nor communism/socialism can claim a monopoly on morality. If you are looking for facts, read peer-reviewed academic literature, not books. One can publish any nonsense in a book and cite hundreds of other nonsensical books. You won't be able to publish the same kind of nonsense in a peer-reviewed journal. |
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