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The genocide ended when [[Vietnam]], backed by the Soviet Union, invaded Cambodia, removing Pol Pot from power.<ref>Howard, Lise Morje. [http://books.google.com/books?id=QeVykay5lakC&pg=PA132&dq=American-backed+genocide+cambodia&lr=#v=onepage&q=American-backed%20genocide%20cambodia&f=false ''UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars''.] Cambridge University Press. P. 132.</ref> U.S. analyst Lawrence LeBlanc has suggested that the United States bowed to Chinese and ASEAN interests and voted for a UN seat for the Pol Pot regime{{ndash}} however the USA claimed that the issue of seating a delegation was purely technical and legal, and that its support of seating the Pol Pot regime did not imply approval of that regime's policies, although key [[Jimmy Carter]] aide [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]] has admitted that the U.S. encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot, remarking in 1979 that "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot... Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could."<ref name="LeBlanc">LeBlanc, Lawrence J. [http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/united-states-foreign-policies-toward-genocide "United States Foreign Policies Toward Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity".]</ref><ref>Kiernan, Ben. [http://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/kiernan.htm "Cambodia's Twisted Path to Justice"]. History Place. Retrieved 11 August 2009.</ref>
The genocide ended when [[Vietnam]], backed by the Soviet Union, invaded Cambodia, removing Pol Pot from power.<ref>Howard, Lise Morje. [http://books.google.com/books?id=QeVykay5lakC&pg=PA132&dq=American-backed+genocide+cambodia&lr=#v=onepage&q=American-backed%20genocide%20cambodia&f=false ''UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars''.] Cambridge University Press. P. 132.</ref> U.S. analyst Lawrence LeBlanc has suggested that the United States bowed to Chinese and ASEAN interests and voted for a UN seat for the Pol Pot regime{{ndash}} however the USA claimed that the issue of seating a delegation was purely technical and legal, and that its support of seating the Pol Pot regime did not imply approval of that regime's policies, although key [[Jimmy Carter]] aide [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]] has admitted that the U.S. encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot, remarking in 1979 that "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot... Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could."<ref name="LeBlanc">LeBlanc, Lawrence J. [http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/united-states-foreign-policies-toward-genocide "United States Foreign Policies Toward Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity".]</ref><ref>Kiernan, Ben. [http://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/kiernan.htm "Cambodia's Twisted Path to Justice"]. History Place. Retrieved 11 August 2009.</ref>

===China===
{{see also|Sinicization of Tibet}}
During the [[Great Leap Forward]] and the [[Cultural Revolution]] in the [[People's Republic of China]] estimated 30 million people were killed due to political repressions and starving.<ref>{{cite book |title= Dictionary of genocide |last=Totten, |first=Samuel |authorlink= |coauthors=Paul Robert Bartrop, Steven L. Jacobs |year=2008 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |location= |isbn=0313346429 |page=69 |pages= |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=xWKjSc0ql3cC&pg=PA69&dq |accessdate=}}</ref>

In 1960, drought and other bad weather affected 55 percent of the cultivated land in China, while in the north an estimated 60% of agricultural land received no rain at all.<ref name="Atimes">[http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FD01Ad04.html Asia times online]</ref> The [[Encyclopædia Britannica]] yearbooks from 1958 to 1962 also reported abnormal weather, followed by droughts and floods. Close planting, the idea of Ukrainian pseudo-scientist [[Trofim Lysenko]].<ref>''The People's Republic of China 1949-76'', second edition, Michael Lynch (London: Hodder Education, 2008), p. 57</ref> had been implemented. The density of seedlings was at first tripled and then doubled again, according to the theory, plants of the same species would not compete with each other. In practice they did, which stunted growth and resulted in lower yields. Lysenko's colleague's theory encouraged peasants across China to [[plowing|plow]] deeply into the soil (up to 1 or 2 meters). They believed the most fertile soil was deep in the earth, allowing extra strong root growth. However, useless rocks, soil, and sand were driven up instead, burying the topsoil. [[Mao Tse Tong]]'s [[Great Leap Forward]], had reorganized the workforce; millions of agricultural worker had joined the iron and steel production workforce.

As a result of these factors, year over year grain production in China dropped by 15% in 1959. By 1960, it was at 70% of its 1958 level. There was no recovery until 1962, after the Great Leap Forward ended.<ref>{{cite web|title=What caused the great Chinese famine?|url=http://www.res.org.uk/society/mediabriefings/pdfs/2000/January/yang3.pdf|date=2000-01-01|accessdate=2009-05-14}}</ref>

According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. Unofficial estimates vary, but are often considerably higher. [[Yang Jisheng]], a former [[Xinhua News Agency]] reporter who spent over ten years gathering information available to no other scholars, estimates a toll of 36 million.<ref name=hunger>[http://en.chinaelections.org/newsinfo.asp?newsid=18328 "A hunger for the truth: A new book, banned on the mainland, is becoming the definitive account of the Great Famine."], chinaelections.org, [[7 July]] [[2008]]</ref>

Professors and scholars of the famine, who never use the word 'genocide' to describe it, but rather more neutral terms, such as "abnormal deaths", have estimated that they number between 17 million to 50 million. Some western analysts such as [[Patricia Buckley Ebrey]] estimate that about 20-40 million people had died of starvation caused by bad government policy and natural disasters. J. Banister estimates this number is about 23 million. Li Chengrui, a former minister of the [[National Bureau of Statistics of China]], estimated 22 million (1998). His estimation was based on [[Ansley J. Coale]] and Jiang Zhenghua's estimation of 17 million. Cao Shuji estimated 32.5 million.


==Recent developments==
==Recent developments==

Revision as of 19:39, 15 August 2009

Skulls of victims of communist regime in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
Child victim of the Holodomor.

The term Communist genocide [1] refers to the claim that mass killings carried out by the communist regimes in the former USSR,[2] the Democratic Kampuchea, the People's Republic of China[3] and Ethiopia[4] should be considered genocide or politicide.[5]

In his book "The Lost Literature of Socialism", George Watson cites an 1849 article called "The Hungarian Struggle", written by Engels and published in Marx's journal the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, in which "The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism, which in advanced nations was already giving place to capitalism, must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire nations would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age, and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history."[6]

Among historians, estimates of the mass killings by communist regimes vary between 60 to 100 million people.[7] The number of communist genocide victims, however, is much higher: 126,000,000 people were victims of Soviet genocide.[8] Extrapolating to the present day, in the Soviet Union alone, nearly 162,000,000 human beings–a number significantly greater than the entire population of the Russian Federation–would have been victims of the Soviet Russian Genocide.[8]

Overview

Harry Wu writes "The term ‘genocide’ was first coined in the 1940s to describe the horrors of Nazi rule in occupied Europe. In Nazi Germany, the machine of oppression was the concentration camp; in the Soviet Union, the Gulag. In China, it is the Laogai which means ‘reform through labor.’"[9] Former Vietnamese judge Nguyen Cao Quyen, who was a victim of communist political repression after the communist victory in the Vietnam War, describes communist genocide as the "genocide of entire classes".[10] Michael Shafir writes, "the notion of genocide has originally been confined to the physical annihilation, or intention to do so, of members of whole nations. If it were to have remained confined within those boundaries, the Communist genocide would, perhaps, be arguably applicable to massive deportations and annihilation of a large number of Ukrainians, Balts and other Soviet nationals, but if would leave out the massive extermination of own-nationals. The Cambodian Khmer Rouge, among others, could never be indicted for 'genocide,' which is absurd."[11]

John N. Gray in the book Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought observed "that the political creation of an artificial terror-famine with genocidal results is not a phenomenon restricted to the historical context of Russia and the Ukraine in the Thirties, but is a feature of Communist policy to this day, as evidenced in the sixties in Tibet and now in Ethiopia. The socialist genocide of small, "primitive" peoples, such as the Kalmucks and many others, has been a recurrent element in polices at several stages in the development of Soviet and Chinese totalitarianism". Gray goes on to state "that communist policy in this respect faithfully reproduces classical Marxism, which had an explicit and pronounced contempt for "small, backward and reactionary peoples - no less than for the peasantry as a class and a form of social life".[4]

Nathaniel Weyl wrote of political aristocide that "In modern times, the outstanding instances have been the genocides commited by the Nazis and Communists."[12] According to Dr. Kors, founder of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), "No other system has caused as much death as communism has".[13] Stéphane Courtois in The Black Book of Communism compared Communism and Nazism as 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." [14]

History

Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

See also: Great Purge

During the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks engaged in a campaign of genocide against the Don Cossacks.[15][16][17][18] The most reliable estimates indicate that, out of a population of three million, between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20.[19]

According to media reports, the Holodomor has been recognized as genocide by a number of countries,[20] while the European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling it "an appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity".[21] Andrew Gregorovich, member of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES), described the Holodomor or the Ukrainian genocide as "the worst genocide on the continent of Europe in history".[22]

In 1988 the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine reported to Congress that the American government had ample and timely information about the Famine but failed to take any steps which might have ameliorated the situation. During the Famine certain members of the American press corps cooperated with the Soviet government to deny the existence of the Ukrainian Famine.[23]

After Estonia was incorporated into the Soviet Union, Estonia was subjected to Communist state terror, which, according to Estonia's Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes, evolved to genocide.[24] Such claims are not widely accepted.[25]

According to Arno Tanner, adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki, a special target of Soviet oppressions were the Crimean Tatars, who were eliminated by the thousands from the late 1920s onward, including the whole intellectual class. After World War II, the whole population of Crimean Tatars (200,000-250,000) were deported from their homeland. [26]

Cambodia

Cambodia's ethnic minorities that constituted 15 percent of the population were driven out from the country or simply murdered during the Khmer Rouge regime. Out of 450,000 Vietnamese living in the country no survivors were known by 1979. The Chinese community about 425,000 people in 1975 was reduced to 200,000 during the next four years.[27]

Cambodia led by Pol Pot, executed after a veneer of due process, over a million Cambodians, out of a total population of 8 million.[28] Estimates suggest approximately 1.7 million were killed in the Cambodian genocide and it is described by the Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program as "one of the worst human tragedies of the last century."[29] Pol Pot is sometimes described as "the Hitler of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant".[30] Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era".[31]

The genocide ended when Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union, invaded Cambodia, removing Pol Pot from power.[32] U.S. analyst Lawrence LeBlanc has suggested that the United States bowed to Chinese and ASEAN interests and voted for a UN seat for the Pol Pot regime– however the USA claimed that the issue of seating a delegation was purely technical and legal, and that its support of seating the Pol Pot regime did not imply approval of that regime's policies, although key Jimmy Carter aide Zbigniew Brzezinski has admitted that the U.S. encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot, remarking in 1979 that "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot... Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could."[33][34]

Recent developments

Remembrance of communist genocide

Remembrance Day for the Victims of Communist Genocide is celebrated in Latvia on June 14.[35]

Charges of communist genocide

In 2005, Slovenia charged Mitja Ribicic, a chief in the security forces under Yugoslavia's communist leader Tito, with genocide as Slovene media accused him of orchestrating "summary execution of suspected Nazi collaborators."[36]

In August 2007, Arnold Meri, a cousin of former Estonian president Lennart Meri, faced charges of communist genocide by Estonian authorities.[37]

Denial of communist genocide and law against denial

To prevent the denial of communist genocide, several Central European countries enacted laws which state "endorsing or attempting to justify Nazi or Communist genocide" will be punishable by up to three years of imprisonment.[38]

The Czech Republic has a law including a provision against denial of communist genocide. Article 261a of the amended constitution of December 16, 1992 states "the person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves or tries to justify Nazi or communist genocide, or other crimes against humanity of Nazis or communists will be punished by prison of 6 months to 3 years."[39]

In Ukraine, a draft law "On Amendments to the Criminal and the Procedural Criminal Codes of Ukraine" submitted by President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada, envisages prosecution for public denial of the Holodomor Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as a fact of genocide of the Ukrainian people, and of the Holocaust as the fact of genocide of the Jewish people. The draft law foresees that public denial as well as production and dissemination of materials denying the above shall be punished by a fine of 100 to 300 untaxed minimum salaries, or imprisonment of up to two years.[40]

See also

Notes and References

  • Valentino, Benjamin A (2005). "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia". Final solutions: mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century. Cornell University Press. pp. 91–151. ISBN 0801472733. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  • WEISS-WENDT, ANTON (2005). "Hostage of Politics Raphael Lemkin on "Soviet Genocide"" (PDF). Journal of Genocide Research (7(4)): 551–559. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • Deker, Nikolai (1958). Genocide in the USSR: studies in group destruction. Scarecrow Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  1. ^ White, James Daniel (2007). "Understanding genocide". Fear of persecution: global human rights, international law, and human well-being. Lexington Books. pp. 248–249. ISBN 0739115669. The scale of communist genocide is overwhelming, and it will be years before all the information about these atrocities is processed and disseminated {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ Deker, Nikolai K (1958). Genocide in the USSR: studies in group destruction. Scarecrow Press. p. 12. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ Gray, Brian. Advanced Iron Palm. DEStech Publications. p. 67. ISBN 1932078908. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help).
  4. ^ a b Gray, John. In Totalitarianism at the crossroads. Ellen Frankel Paul (Editor). Transaction Publisher, 1990
  5. ^ Lenṭin, Ronit (1997). Gender and catastrophe. Zed Books. p. 1997. Soviet and communist genocide and mass state killings, sometimes termed politicide, occurred in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and the People's Republic of China {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  6. ^ Watson, George, The Lost Literature of Socialism, page 77. James Clarke & Co., 1998. ISBN 0718829867, 9780718829865, 112 pages
  7. ^ Valentino, Benjamin (2005). Final solutions: mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century. Cornell University Press. p. 275. ISBN 0801472733. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  8. ^ a b "The Genocide Clock". ATTAC Report. Retrieved 15 August 2009.
  9. ^ Classicide-Genocide in Communist China, by Harry Wu, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2006, Vol. 18 Issue 1/2, p121-135, 15p
  10. ^ Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOCMF) hold Fund Raising Gala The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
  11. ^ Shafir, Michael. In Lentin, Ronit. Re-presenting the Shoah for the Twenty-first Century. Berghahn Books, 2004. ISBN 9781571818027. P. 220.
  12. ^ Aristocide as a force in history
  13. ^ Communist Genocide Studies Needed
  14. ^ The Black Book of Communism, Introduction, page 15.
  15. ^ Rummel, R.J. In Israel W. Charny, Encyclopedia of genocide, 1999, page 521
  16. ^ Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-07608-7 pp. 8-9
  17. ^ Donald Rayfield. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. Random House, 2004. ISBN 0-375-50632-2. p. 83.
  18. ^ R. J. Rummel. Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers, 1990. ISBN 1560008873 p. 2.
  19. ^ Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1400040051 pp. 70–71.
  20. ^ Veronica Khokhlova Ukraine: Famine Recognized As Genocide
  21. ^ "European Parliament resolution of 23 October 2008 on the commemoration of the Holodomor, the Ukraine artificial famine (1932-1933)".
  22. ^ Speech by Andrew Gregorovich, COMMUNIST CRIMES IN UKRAINE
  23. ^ "Findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine" (1988)
  24. ^ Historical Introduction Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes
  25. ^ "Estonian war figure laid to rest". BBC News. 2 April 2009. Retrieved 2009-04-02.
  26. ^ Tanner, Arno (2004). "The Crimean Tatars, 2.5 The Genocide and Deportation". The forgotten minorities of Eastern Europe: the history and today of selected ethnic groups in five countries. East-West Books. pp. 26–30. ISBN 9789529168088. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  27. ^ Totten, Samuel (2004). Century of genocide:. Routledge. p. 345. ISBN 0415944309. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  28. ^ Kaplan, Robert D., The Ends of the Earth, Vintage, 1996, p. 406.
  29. ^ The CGP, 1994-2008 Cambodian Genocide Program, Yale University
  30. ^ William Branigin, Architect of Genocide Was Unrepentant to the End The Washington Post, April 17, 1998
  31. ^ Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution by Martin Shaw, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp 141, ISBN 9780521597302
  32. ^ Howard, Lise Morje. UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars. Cambridge University Press. P. 132.
  33. ^ LeBlanc, Lawrence J. "United States Foreign Policies Toward Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity".
  34. ^ Kiernan, Ben. "Cambodia's Twisted Path to Justice". History Place. Retrieved 11 August 2009.
  35. ^ Remembrance Day for the Victims of Communist Genocide
  36. ^ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4581197.stm Man on Slovenia genocide charges] BBC News
  37. ^ Estonian charged with Communist genocide International Herald Tribune, August 23, 2007
  38. ^ Is Holocaust denial against the law? Anne Frank House
  39. ^ Michael Whine, Expanding Holocaust Denial and Legislation Against It Institute for Global Jewish Affairs
  40. ^ "Public denial of Holodomor Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as genocide of Ukrainian people to be prosecuted", December 12, 2007

Further reading

  • Communist Genocide in Cambodia
  • The Communist Genocide in Romania, by Gheorghe Boldur-Latescu, Nova Science Publishers, 2006, ISBN 9781594542510
  • Murder of A Gentle Land, The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia, by Barron, John & Paul, Anthony, NY Reader's Digest Press 1977, ISBN 0-88349-129-X
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