The Black Book of Communism
Encyclopedia
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored by several European academics and edited by Stéphane Courtois
, which describes a history of repression
s, both political and civilian
, by Communist state
s, including genocide
s, extrajudicial execution
s, deportation
s, and artificial famine
s. The book was originally published in 1997 in France
under the title Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression by Éditions Robert Laffont
. In the United States it is published by Harvard University Press
.
Courtois claims that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movement, including Nazism
. The statistics of victims includes executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation, and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labor.
described in the book include:
and Nazism
slightly different totalitarian systems. He claims that Communist regimes have killed "approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million victims of Nazis". Courtois claims that Nazi Germany's methods of mass extermination were adopted from Soviet methods. As an example, he cites Nazi state official Rudolf Höss who organized the infamous death camp in Auschwitz. According to Höss,
Courtois argues that the Soviet genocide
s of peoples living in the Caucasus and exterminations of large social groups in Russia were not very much different from similar policies by Nazis. Both Communist and Nazi systems deemed "a part of humanity unworthy of existence. The difference is that the Communist model is based on the class system, the Nazi model on race and territory." Courtois stated that
He also added that "after 1945 the Jewish genocide became a byword for modern barbarism, the epitome of twentieth-century mass terror... more recently, a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has also prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world. After all, it seems scarcely plausible that the victors who had helped bring about the destruction of a genocidal apparatus might themselves have put the very same methods into practice. When faced with this paradox, people generally preferred to bury their heads in sand."
and Britain
, including the Times Literary Supplement, New York Times Book Review, Library Journal
, Kirkus Reviews
, The New Republic
, National Review
and The Weekly Standard
. Some reviewers compared the book to The Black Book, a documentary record of the Nazi atrocities by Ilya Ehrenburg
and Vasily Grossman
. The phrase "livre noir" has however been frequently used for more than a century in France.
According to review by historian Tony Judt
in The New York Times
: "The myth of the well-intentioned founders—the good czar Lenin betrayed by his evil heirs—has been laid to rest for good. No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of Communism"
Anne Applebaum
, journalist and author of Gulag: A History
described the book as "a serious, scholarly history of Communist crimes in the Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Africa, and Latin America...The Black Book does indeed surpass many of its predecessors in conveying the grand scale of the Communist tragedy, thanks to its authors' extensive use of the newly opened archives of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe."
Martin Malia
, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, described the book as "the publishing sensation in France.. detailing Communism's crimes from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989...[The Black Book of Communism] gives a balance sheet of our present knowledge of Communism's human costs, archivally based where possible, and otherwise drawing on the best secondary works, and with due allowance for the difficulties of quantification."
The Council of Europe
based its Resolution 1481
, which condemned totalitarian communist regimés, upon the figures from the book.
's China range between 19.5 million and 75 million. The authors of the Black Book defend their estimates for the Soviet Union (20 million) and Eastern Europe (1 million) by stating that they made use of sources that were not available to previous researchers. At the same time, the authors acknowledge that the estimates from China and other nations still ruled by communist parties are uncertain since their archives are still closed. Left-wing French journalist Gilles Perrault
, writing in an op-ed
in Le Monde diplomatique
has accused the authors of having used incorrect data and of having manipulated figures.
Some of the estimates given in the Black Book have been deemed "too conservative" by some scholars. For example, regarding the Soviet famine of 1946-48, Michael Ellman writes:
Critics have argued that capitalist countries could be held responsible for a similar number of deaths. Noam Chomsky
, for example, writes that Amartya Sen
in the early 1980s estimated the excess of mortality in India over China due to the latter's "relatively equitable distribution of medical resources" at close to 4 million a year. Chomsky therefore argues that, "suppos[ing] we now apply the methodology of the Black Book and its reviewers" to India, "the democratic capitalist 'experiment' has caused more deaths than in the entire history of ... Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, and tens of millions more since, in India alone."
Journalist Daniel Singer has also criticized the Black Book for discussing the faults of communist states while ignoring their positive achievements; he says that "if you look at Communism as merely the story of crimes, terror and repression, to borrow the subtitle of the Black Book, you are missing the point." According to him, "The Soviet Union did not rest on the gulag alone. There was also enthusiasm, construction, the spread of education and social advancement for millions." He also argues that if communism can be blamed for famines, capitalism should be blamed for most or all deaths from poverty
in the world at the present time.
Historian Ján Křen said in interview that when Karel Bartošek and other co-authors found out the book "is heading towards conjectural shallowness, in which communism is reduced to terror only, there was a bad conflict, which couldn't be solved, because agreement was signed and Stephane Courtois pressured them".
noted that famine accounted for a significant part of Courtois's 100 million death toll. He believes that these famines were caused by the "stupidity or incompetence of the regime," and that the deaths resulting from the famines, as well as other deaths that "resulted directly or indirectly from government policy," should not be counted as if they were equivalent to intentional murders and executions.
Mark Tauger disagrees with the authors' thesis that the famine of 1933 was artificial and genocidal. Tauger asserts that the authors' interpretation of the famine contains errors, misconceptions, and omissions that invalidate their arguments. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and several historians of the period (such as Dmitri Volkogonov
and Aleksandr Bushkov
) also developed the views according to which the famine was not racially and politically motivated (which also represents the official stance of the Russian government). However, the historian James Mace
wrote that Mark Tauger's view of the famine "is not taken seriously by either Russians or Ukrainians who have studied the topic." Moreover, Stephen Wheatcroft, author of The Years of Hunger, claims Tauger's view represents the opposite extreme in arguing the famine was totally accidental.
Professor Alexander Dallin said the authors make no attempt to differentiate between intended crimes such as the Moscow show trials and policy choices that had unintended consequences such as the Chinese famine.
, in his review of the Black Book in the journal "Human Rights Review", argued that the Black Books comparison between Communism and Nazism was both morally and scholarly justifiable. Others however have rejected the comparison.
Two of the Black Books contributors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, sparked a debate in France when they publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois's statements in the introduction about the scale of Communist terror. They felt that he was being obsessed with arriving at a total of 100 million killed. They also argued that, based on the results of their studies one can estimate the total number of the victims of the Communist abuse in between 65 and 93 million. They also rejected his equation of Soviet repression with Nazi genocide. Werth said there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and Communism. He told Le Monde
, "Death camps
did not exist in the Soviet Union", and "The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious."
Courtois' insists that the Holocaust was "actively commemorated" thanks to the efforts of the "international Jewish community" and that a "single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide... has prevented an assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world."
Some scholars hold Courtois' anti-Communism responsible for historical revisionism and accuse him of blurring the memory of Vichy and Nazi crimes. During the trial of convicted war criminal Maurice Papon
, Papon's lawyer attempted to introduce the Black Book into evidence. Holocaust historian Annette Wievriorka argued that the Black Book attempted to substitute the memory of Communism for the memory of Nazi crimes and displace accounts of Nazi atrocities.
Stéphane Courtois
Stéphane Courtois is a French historian, an internationally known expert on communist studies, particularly the history of communism and communist genocides, and author of several books...
, which describes a history of repression
Political repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
s, both political and civilian
Civilian
A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...
, by Communist state
Communist state
A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...
s, including genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
s, extrajudicial execution
Extrajudicial punishment
Extrajudicial punishment is punishment by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code if deemed necessary.-Nature:Extrajudicial...
s, deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
s, and artificial famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
s. The book was originally published in 1997 in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
under the title Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression by Éditions Robert Laffont
Éditions Robert Laffont
Éditions Robert Laffont is a book publishing company in France founded in 1941 by Robert Laffont. Its publications are distributed in almost all francophone countries, but mainly in France, Canada and in Belgium....
. In the United States it is published by Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
.
Estimated number of victims
In the introduction, editor Stéphane Courtois asserts that "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government". He cites a death toll which totals 94 million, not counting the "excess deaths" (decrease of the population due to lower than-expected birth rates). The breakdown of the number of deaths given by Courtois is as follows:- 65 million in the People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of ChinaChina , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
- 20 million in the Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
- 2 million in CambodiaCambodiaCambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
- 2 million in North KoreaNorth KoreaThe Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
- 1.7 million in AfricaAfricaAfrica is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
- 1.5 million in AfghanistanAfghanistanAfghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
- 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern EuropeEastern blocThe term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
- 1 million in VietnamVietnamVietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
- 150,000 in Latin AmericaLatin AmericaLatin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
- 10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power."(p. 4)
Courtois claims that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movement, including Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. The statistics of victims includes executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation, and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labor.
Soviet repressions
Repressions and famines occurring in the Soviet Union under the regime of Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
described in the book include:
- the executions of tens of thousands of hostages and prisoners, and the murder of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922 (See also: Red TerrorRed TerrorThe Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. In Soviet historiography, the Red Terror is described as having been officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended about October 1918...
) - the Russian famine of 1921Russian famine of 1921The Russian famine of 1921, also known as Povolzhye famine, which began in the early spring of that year, and lasted through 1922, was a severe famine that occurred in Bolshevik Russia...
, which caused the death of 5 million people - the extermination and deportationDecossackizationDecossackization is a term used to describe the Bolsheviks' policy of the systematic elimination of the Cossacks of the Don and the Kuban as a social and ethnic group...
of the Don CossacksDon CossacksDon Cossacks were Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don.- Etymology and origins :The Don Cossack Host was a frontier military organization from the end of the 16th until the early 20th century....
in 1920 - the murder of tens of thousands in concentration camps in the period between 1918 and 1930
- the Great PurgeGreat PurgeThe Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
which killed almost 690,000 people - the deportation ofDekulakizationDekulakization was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929-1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies...
2 million so-called "kulakKulakKulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
s" from 1930 to 1932 - the deaths of 4 million UkrainiansUkrainiansUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
(HolodomorHolodomorThe Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...
) and 2 million others during the famine of 1932 and 1933 - the deportations of PolesPolesthumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
, UkrainiansUkrainiansUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
, MoldaviansMoldovansMoldovans or Moldavians are the largest population group of Moldova...
and people from the Baltic Republics from 1939 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1945 - the deportation of the Volga Germans in 1941
- the deportation of the Crimean TatarsCrimean TatarsCrimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
in 1943 - the deportation of the ChechensChechen peopleChechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...
in 1944 - the deportation of the IngushIngush peopleThe Ingush are a native ethnic group of the North Caucasus, mostly inhabiting the Russian republic of Ingushetia. They refer to themselves as Ghalghai . The Ingush are predominantly Sunni Muslims and speak the Ingush language...
in 1944.(p. 9-10) (See also: Population transfer in the Soviet UnionPopulation transfer in the Soviet UnionPopulation transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
)
Comparison of Communism and Nazism
Courtois considers CommunismCommunism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
slightly different totalitarian systems. He claims that Communist regimes have killed "approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million victims of Nazis". Courtois claims that Nazi Germany's methods of mass extermination were adopted from Soviet methods. As an example, he cites Nazi state official Rudolf Höss who organized the infamous death camp in Auschwitz. According to Höss,
The Reich Security Head Office issued to the commandants a full collection of reports concerning the Russian concentration camps. These described in great detail the conditions in, and organization of, the Russian camps, as supplied by former prisoners who had managed to escape. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that the Russians, by their massive employment of forced labor, had destroyed whole peoples.
Courtois argues that the Soviet genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
s of peoples living in the Caucasus and exterminations of large social groups in Russia were not very much different from similar policies by Nazis. Both Communist and Nazi systems deemed "a part of humanity unworthy of existence. The difference is that the Communist model is based on the class system, the Nazi model on race and territory." Courtois stated that
The "genocide of a "class" may well be tantamount to the genocide of a "race" - the deliberate starvation of a child of a Ukrainian kulakKulakKulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
as a result of the famine caused by Stalin's regime "is equal to" the starvation of a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghettoWarsaw GhettoThe Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
as a result of the famine caused by the Nazi regime.
He also added that "after 1945 the Jewish genocide became a byword for modern barbarism, the epitome of twentieth-century mass terror... more recently, a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has also prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world. After all, it seems scarcely plausible that the victors who had helped bring about the destruction of a genocidal apparatus might themselves have put the very same methods into practice. When faced with this paradox, people generally preferred to bury their heads in sand."
Reception
The book has evoked a wide variety of responses, ranging from enthusiastic support to severe criticism.Support
The Black Book of Communism received praise in a number of publications in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, including the Times Literary Supplement, New York Times Book Review, Library Journal
Library Journal
Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...
, Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
and The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...
. Some reviewers compared the book to The Black Book, a documentary record of the Nazi atrocities by Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure.Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a...
and Vasily Grossman
Vasily Grossman
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was a Soviet writer and journalist. Grossman trained as an engineer and worked in the Donets Basin, but changed career in the 1930s and published short stories and several novels...
. The phrase "livre noir" has however been frequently used for more than a century in France.
According to review by historian Tony Judt
Tony Judt
Tony Robert Judt FBA was a British historian, essayist, and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University, and Director of NYU's Erich Maria Remarque Institute...
in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
: "The myth of the well-intentioned founders—the good czar Lenin betrayed by his evil heirs—has been laid to rest for good. No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of Communism"
Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is a journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has written extensively about communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She has been an editor at The Economist, and a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post...
, journalist and author of Gulag: A History
Gulag: A History
Gulag: A History, also published as Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, is a non-fiction book covering the history of the Soviet Gulag system. It was written by American author Anne Applebaum and published in 2003 by Doubleday. Gulag won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the...
described the book as "a serious, scholarly history of Communist crimes in the Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Africa, and Latin America...The Black Book does indeed surpass many of its predecessors in conveying the grand scale of the Communist tragedy, thanks to its authors' extensive use of the newly opened archives of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe."
Martin Malia
Martin Malia
Martin Edward Malia was a historian specializing in Russian history. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1958 to 1991.One of his colleagues at Berkeley was another prominent Russian historian, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky...
, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, described the book as "the publishing sensation in France.. detailing Communism's crimes from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989...[The Black Book of Communism] gives a balance sheet of our present knowledge of Communism's human costs, archivally based where possible, and otherwise drawing on the best secondary works, and with due allowance for the difficulties of quantification."
The Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
based its Resolution 1481
Council of Europe resolution 1481
In the resolution 1481/2006 of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly issued on January 25, 2006 during its winter session, the Council of Europe "strongly condemns crimes of totalitarian communist regimes"....
, which condemned totalitarian communist regimés, upon the figures from the book.
Estimated number of victims
Estimates for the number of victims in the Soviet Union range between 3.5 million and 60 million, and those for Mao ZedongMao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's China range between 19.5 million and 75 million. The authors of the Black Book defend their estimates for the Soviet Union (20 million) and Eastern Europe (1 million) by stating that they made use of sources that were not available to previous researchers. At the same time, the authors acknowledge that the estimates from China and other nations still ruled by communist parties are uncertain since their archives are still closed. Left-wing French journalist Gilles Perrault
Gilles Perrault
Gilles Perrault is a left-wing French writer and journalist.He attended the Collège Stanislas de Paris and then studied at the Institut d'études politiques, eventually becoming a lawyer, a profession he worked in for five years....
, writing in an op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
in Le Monde diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique is a monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first created mainly for a diplomatic audience as its name implies...
has accused the authors of having used incorrect data and of having manipulated figures.
Some of the estimates given in the Black Book have been deemed "too conservative" by some scholars. For example, regarding the Soviet famine of 1946-48, Michael Ellman writes:
"In their ‘black book’, CourtoisStéphane CourtoisStéphane Courtois is a French historian, an internationally known expert on communist studies, particularly the history of communism and communist genocides, and author of several books...
et al. (1997, pp. 258–64) do discuss the famine. The number of victims they give, however, while correct (‘at least 500,000’) is formulated in an extremely conservative way, since the actual number of victims was much larger." (1,000,000 to 1,500,000 excess deaths according to Ellman)
Argument that the book is one-sided
Some pointed out that the book's account of violence is one-sided. Amir Weiner of Stanford University characterizes the "Black Book" as seriously flawed, inconsistent, and prone to mere provocation. In particular, the authors are said to savage Marxist ideology. The methodology of the authors has been criticized. Alexander Dallin writes that moral, legal, or political judgement hardly depends on the number of victims. It is also argued that a similar chronicle of violence and death tolls can be constructed from an examination of colonialism and capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, the Black Book's attribution of 1 million deaths in Vietnam to Communism while ignoring the U.S. role has been criticized as a methodological flaw.Critics have argued that capitalist countries could be held responsible for a similar number of deaths. Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, for example, writes that Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen, CH is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members...
in the early 1980s estimated the excess of mortality in India over China due to the latter's "relatively equitable distribution of medical resources" at close to 4 million a year. Chomsky therefore argues that, "suppos[ing] we now apply the methodology of the Black Book and its reviewers" to India, "the democratic capitalist 'experiment' has caused more deaths than in the entire history of ... Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, and tens of millions more since, in India alone."
Journalist Daniel Singer has also criticized the Black Book for discussing the faults of communist states while ignoring their positive achievements; he says that "if you look at Communism as merely the story of crimes, terror and repression, to borrow the subtitle of the Black Book, you are missing the point." According to him, "The Soviet Union did not rest on the gulag alone. There was also enthusiasm, construction, the spread of education and social advancement for millions." He also argues that if communism can be blamed for famines, capitalism should be blamed for most or all deaths from poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
in the world at the present time.
Historian Ján Křen said in interview that when Karel Bartošek and other co-authors found out the book "is heading towards conjectural shallowness, in which communism is reduced to terror only, there was a bad conflict, which couldn't be solved, because agreement was signed and Stephane Courtois pressured them".
Disputing the "terror-famine" thesis
Historian J. Arch GettyJ. Arch Getty
John Archibald Getty, III is an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is noted for his research on Russian and Soviet history, especially the period under Joseph Stalin and the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Life and career:Getty was...
noted that famine accounted for a significant part of Courtois's 100 million death toll. He believes that these famines were caused by the "stupidity or incompetence of the regime," and that the deaths resulting from the famines, as well as other deaths that "resulted directly or indirectly from government policy," should not be counted as if they were equivalent to intentional murders and executions.
Mark Tauger disagrees with the authors' thesis that the famine of 1933 was artificial and genocidal. Tauger asserts that the authors' interpretation of the famine contains errors, misconceptions, and omissions that invalidate their arguments. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and several historians of the period (such as Dmitri Volkogonov
Dmitri Volkogonov
Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov was a Russian historian and officer.-Biography:...
and Aleksandr Bushkov
Aleksandr Bushkov
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bushkov is a best-selling Russian author who has written books in the genres of science fiction, crime fiction, popular history and non-fiction. In his belletristic, published in literary and popular journals, Bushkov has been critical of conventional academic approaches...
) also developed the views according to which the famine was not racially and politically motivated (which also represents the official stance of the Russian government). However, the historian James Mace
James Mace
James E. Mace was an American historian, professor, and prominent researcher of the Holodomor.-Biography:...
wrote that Mark Tauger's view of the famine "is not taken seriously by either Russians or Ukrainians who have studied the topic." Moreover, Stephen Wheatcroft, author of The Years of Hunger, claims Tauger's view represents the opposite extreme in arguing the famine was totally accidental.
Professor Alexander Dallin said the authors make no attempt to differentiate between intended crimes such as the Moscow show trials and policy choices that had unintended consequences such as the Chinese famine.
Disputing the comparison of Nazism and Communism
Vladimir TismăneanuVladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
, in his review of the Black Book in the journal "Human Rights Review", argued that the Black Books comparison between Communism and Nazism was both morally and scholarly justifiable. Others however have rejected the comparison.
Two of the Black Books contributors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, sparked a debate in France when they publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois's statements in the introduction about the scale of Communist terror. They felt that he was being obsessed with arriving at a total of 100 million killed. They also argued that, based on the results of their studies one can estimate the total number of the victims of the Communist abuse in between 65 and 93 million. They also rejected his equation of Soviet repression with Nazi genocide. Werth said there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and Communism. He told Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
, "Death camps
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
did not exist in the Soviet Union", and "The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious."
Courtois' insists that the Holocaust was "actively commemorated" thanks to the efforts of the "international Jewish community" and that a "single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide... has prevented an assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world."
Some scholars hold Courtois' anti-Communism responsible for historical revisionism and accuse him of blurring the memory of Vichy and Nazi crimes. During the trial of convicted war criminal Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon was a French civil servant, industrial leader and Gaullist politician, who was convicted for crimes against humanity for his participation in the deportation of over 1600 Jews during World War II when he was secretary general for police of the Prefecture of Bordeaux.Papon also...
, Papon's lawyer attempted to introduce the Black Book into evidence. Holocaust historian Annette Wievriorka argued that the Black Book attempted to substitute the memory of Communism for the memory of Nazi crimes and displace accounts of Nazi atrocities.
See also
- Anti-communismAnti-communismAnti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
- Criticisms of communismCriticisms of communismCriticism of communism can be divided into two broad categories: those concerning themselves with the practical aspects of 20th century Communist states, and those concerning themselves with communist principles and theory....
- The Black Book of Capitalism
- The Black Book of ColonialismLe livre noir du colonialismeLe livre noir du colonialisme , written by French historian Marc Ferro, is a 2003 book containing several articles from various historians about the evils of colonialism....
- The Great TerrorThe Great TerrorThe Great Terror is a book by British historian Robert Conquest, published in 1968. It gave rise to an alternate title of the period in Soviet history known as the Great Purge. The complete title of the book is The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties...
- The Gulag ArchipelagoThe Gulag ArchipelagoThe Gulag Archipelago is a book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn based on the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system. The three-volume book is a narrative relying on eyewitness testimony and primary research material, as well as the author's own experiences as a prisoner in a gulag labor camp...
- Mass killings under Communist regimesMass killings under Communist regimesMass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century with an estimated death toll numbering between 85 and 100 million. Scholarship focuses on the causes of mass killings in single societies, though some claims of common causes for mass killings have been made...
- Mao's Great FamineMao's Great FamineMao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62, is a 2010 book by professor and historian Frank Dikötter about the Great Chinese Famine of 1958–1962....
- Red Holocaust
- The Red Holocaust and the GermansDer rote Holocaust und die DeutschenDer rote Holocaust und die Deutschen: Die Debatte um das ' Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus' is a 1999 non-fiction book edited by Horst Möller and published by Piper Verlag...
- The Soviet StoryThe Soviet StoryThe Soviet Story is a 2008 documentary film about Soviet Communism and Soviet-German collaboration before 1941 written and directed by Edvīns Šnore and sponsored by the UEN Group in the European Parliament....
Further reading
- Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane CourtoisStéphane CourtoisStéphane Courtois is a French historian, an internationally known expert on communist studies, particularly the history of communism and communist genocides, and author of several books...
, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University PressHarvard University PressHarvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7 - Anne ApplebaumAnne ApplebaumAnne Elizabeth Applebaum is a journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has written extensively about communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She has been an editor at The Economist, and a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post...
, foreword, Paul HollanderPaul HollanderPaul Hollander is an American scholar, journalist, and conservative political writer. He is known for his criticisms of Communism and left-wing politics. In 1956, he escaped to the west from his native country. He has a Ph.D in Sociology from Princeton University, 1963 and a B.A. from the London...
, introduction and editor, From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence And Repression in Communist Studies, Intercollegiate Studies Institute (April 17, 2006), hardcover, 760 pages, ISBN 1-932236-78-3
External links
- Extracts by the publisher from many different reviews
- Reviews on Amazon.com
- Review - Journal of American History Philippe Bourrinet, "Du bon usage des livres noirs"
- Noam ChomskyNoam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, "Counting the Bodies", Spectre No. 9 Laurent Joffrin, "Sauver Lénine?", LibérationLibérationLibération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
, December 17, 1997 Gilles PerraultGilles PerraultGilles Perrault is a left-wing French writer and journalist.He attended the Collège Stanislas de Paris and then studied at the Institut d'études politiques, eventually becoming a lawyer, a profession he worked in for five years....
, "Communisme, les falsifications d'un «livre noir»", Le Monde diplomatiqueLe Monde diplomatiqueLe Monde diplomatique is a monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first created mainly for a diplomatic audience as its name implies... - Ronald RadoshRonald RadoshRonald Radosh is an American writer, professor, historian, former Marxist, and neoconservative. He is known for his work on the Cold War espionage case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and his advocacy of the state of Israel....
, "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression", review on Firstthings.com, February 2000