Mass killings under communist regimes: Difference between revisions
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{{Expert-subject|History|date=September 2009}} |
{{Expert-subject|History|date=September 2009}} |
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Intentional killing of large numbers of civilians, as a rule, for belonging to a particular social or ethnic group, occurred in the [[Soviet Union]] under [[Stalin]], in the [[People's Republic of China]] under [[Mao]], and in [[Cambodia]] under the [[Khmer Rouge]], and on a smaller scale in some other countries that declared adherence to a Communist doctrine. These killings, that took place mostly during [[civil war]]s, mass elimination of political opponents or [[Counter-revolutionary|counter-revolutionaries]], mass [[terror]] campaigns, or [[land reform]]s may fit a definition of [[mass murder]], [[democide]], [[politicide]], "classicide", "crimes against humanity", or loosely defined [[genocide]]. |
Intentional killing of large numbers of civilians, as a rule, for belonging to a particular social or ethnic group, occurred in the [[Soviet Union]] under [[Stalin]], in the [[People's Republic of China]] under [[Mao]], and in [[Cambodia]] under the [[Khmer Rouge]], and on a smaller scale in some other countries that declared adherence to a Communist doctrine. These killings, that took place mostly during [[civil war]]s, mass elimination of political opponents or [[Counter-revolutionary|counter-revolutionaries]], mass [[terror]] campaigns, or [[land reform]]s may fit a definition of [[mass murder]], [[democide]], [[politicide]], "classicide", "crimes against humanity", or loosely defined [[genocide]]. Nevertheless, direct causes of most of the excess preventable deaths under Communist rule were not murders or executions but war, famine and disease. Although some scholars argue that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to these calamities, and, based on that conclusion add a considerable part of these deaths to a total democide or genocide death toll, the validity of such an approach is questioned by others. |
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== Terminology == |
== Terminology == |
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Intentional killing of large numbers of civilians, as a rule, for belonging to a particular social or ethnic group, occurred in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and on a smaller scale in some other countries that declared adherence to a Communist doctrine. These killings, that took place mostly during civil wars, mass elimination of political opponents or counter-revolutionaries, mass terror campaigns, or land reforms may fit a definition of mass murder, democide, politicide, "classicide", "crimes against humanity", or loosely defined genocide. Nevertheless, direct causes of most of the excess preventable deaths under Communist rule were not murders or executions but war, famine and disease. Although some scholars argue that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to these calamities, and, based on that conclusion add a considerable part of these deaths to a total democide or genocide death toll, the validity of such an approach is questioned by others.
Terminology
Scholars use several different terms to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants.[nb 1][2] Under the Genocide Convention, the Crime of Genocide does not apply to the mass killing of political and social groups. Protection of political groups was eliminated from the UN resolution after a second vote, because many states anticipated that clause to apply unneeded limitations to their right to suppress internal disturbances.[3] The term "politicide" is used to describe the killing of political or economic groups that would otherwise be covered by the Genocide Convention.[4] R. J. Rummel coined the term "democide", which includes genocide, politicide, and mass murder.[5] Jacques Semelin prefers "crime against humanity".[6] Michael Mann has proposed the term "classicide" to mean the "intended mass killing of entire social classes."[7] Stephen Wheathcroft notes that most of the above terms, as well as "the terror", "the purges", "repression" (the latter mostly in common Russian) colloquially refer to the same events.[2] The most neutral of these terms are "repression" and "mass killings".[2] The latter term has been defined by Valentino as "the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants,"[8] where a "massive number" is defined as at least 50,000 intentional deaths over the course of five years or less.[8] This definition is applicable to the excess mortality cases in Stalin's USSR, PRC under Mao and Cambodia under Khmer Rouge, history's most murderous Communist regimes, although mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa.[nb 2]
Regarding the use of democide and politicide data, Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago have shown that depending on the use of democide (generalised state-sponsored killing) or politicide (eliminating groups who are politically opposed) as the criterion for inclusion in a data-set, statistical analyses seeking to establish a connection between mass killings can produce very different results, including the significance or otherwise of regime type.[9]
Helen Fein has termed the mass state killings in the Soviet Union and Cambodia as the "genocide and Democide".[10]
Manus I. Midlarsky who states that while not all Communist states have participated in extensive mass killings he uses the term "politicide" to describe an arc of mass killings from the western parts of the Soviet Union to China and Cambodia. [nb 3]In his book The killing trap: genocide in the twentieth century Manus I. Midlarsky compares similarity of killings of Stalin with those of Pol Pot.[12]
Communist states are believed by some genocide scholars, such as Daniel Goldhagen and Benjamin Valentino, to be responsible for deaths far in excess of any other regime type.[13][nb 4]
Causes
According to Rudolph Joseph Rummel the killings done by communist regimes can be explained with the marriage between absolute power and an absolutist ideology - Marxism. [14]
Eric D. Weitz says that the mass killing in communist states are a natural consequence of the failure of the rule of law, seen commonly during periods of social upheaval in the 20th century. For both communist and non-communist mass killings, "genocides occurred at moments of extreme social crisis, often generated by the very policies of the regimes."[15] They are not inevitable but are political decisions.[15]
Robert Conquest stressed that Stalin's purges were not contrary to the principles of Leninism, but rather a natural consequence of the system established by Lenin.[citation needed] Alexander Yakovlev, architect of perestroika and Glasnost and later head of the Presidential Commission for the Victims of Political Repression, elaborates on this point, stating that "The truth is that in punitive operations Stalin did not think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps, and all the rest."[16] Historian Robert Gellately concurs, saying: "To put it another way, Stalin initiated very little that Lenin had not already introduced or previewed."[17] Said Lenin to his colleagues in the Bolshevik government: “If we are not ready to shoot a saboteur and White Guardist, what sort of revolution is that?” [18]
Benjamin Valentino writes that mass killings strategies are chosen by Communists to economically dispossess large numbers of people.[nb 5] He states that a common structure unites Soviet, Chinese and Cambodian mass killings: the defence of a utopian and shared version of radical communism. Valentino's theory has been used in other works, but is contentious, as other authors claim there is no common link between various incidents where communists have been responsible for mass killing.[19] As philosopher Isaiah Berlin put it, if one could find a 'final solution' to the world's problems, "surely no cost would be too high to obtain it." [nb 6]
Political scientist John N. Gray argues "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".[20]. Literary historian George Watson argued in The Lost Literature of Socialism[21] that analyses of the writings of Engels and others shows that"[t]he 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."[21] He also claimed that from 1840 until the death of Hitler "everyone who advocated genocide called himself a socialist, and no exception has been found."[22] Watson's claims have not been echoed in scholarly articles on the history of genocide and have been criticised by Robert Grant for "dubious evidence", arguing that "what Marx and Engels are calling for is [...] at the very least a kind of cultural genocide; but it is not obvious, at least from Watson's citations, that actual mass killing, rather than (to use their phraseology) mere 'absorption' or 'assimilation', is in question."[23] Grant also claims Watson's concept of 'socialism' is "at best nebulous...and at worst, anything at odds with his own classical liberalism."[23]
In the view of Anton Weiss-Wendt, academic debate regarding the common features of mass killing and other legal measures in communist countries originates in the political advocacy of Raphael Lemkin in advocating the genocide convention.[nb 7]According to Weiss-Wendt, Lemkin's hobby-horse was the international ratification of a Genocide Convention, and he consistently bent his advocacy towards which ever venue would advance his objective. [nb 8]Associating with the US government, Central European and Eastern European emigre communities, Lemkin bent the term genocide to meet the political interests of those he associated with, and in the case of communities of emigres in the US, funded his living.[nb 9] In this way, contends Weiss-Wendt, Lemkin was enmeshed in an anti-Soviet political community, and regularly used the term "Communist genocide" to refer to a broad range of human rights violations—not simply to mass-killings of ethnic groups—in all the post 1945 communist nations, and claimed that future "genocides" would occur in all nations adopting communism. [nb 10] Lemkin's broad application of his term in political lobbying degraded its usefulness, "Like King Midas, whatever Lemkin touched turned into “genocide.” But when everything is genocide nothing is genocide!" states Weiss-Wendt.[24](p555-6) Additionally, Lemkin displayed both a racialism against Russians who he believed "were incapable of “digesting a great number of people belonging to a higher civilization,”"[nb 11] and made broad use of his term in the political service of the USA's anti-communist position in the 1950s concludes Weiss-Wendt. Lemkin has been praised for being the first to use the comparative method into the study of mass violence.
The Black Book of Communism is a set of academic essays on repression in Communist controlled states, detailing "'crimes, terror, and repression' from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989."[25](p x) The editor, Stéphane Courtois' object of analysis is the soviet-style system of states.[26](p727) Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality, "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government,"[25](p4) and says that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.[25](p2) Courtois says that the project is to conduct a nineteenth century moral history, "whereby historians performed research more for the purpose of passing judgement than understanding the issue in question."[25](p10) Malia says in the Foreword that Communist criminality caused mass killings is the shared analytical tendency of the collection,[27](xvii–xviii), culminating in the judgement that Communism or "an absolute end to inequality" must be "accorded its fair share of pure evil."[27](xx) He states two general reasons for barbarity: racialist Russian exceptionalism and the War Experience; neither, as he observes, "explain the Bolsheviks' propensity for extreme violence." [26](727–735). [26](727–741) The Black Book of Communism's correctness has been disputed [who?] based on claims of serious methodological, interpretive, narrative and (to some commentators) ideological flaws.[citation needed]
States where mass killings have occurred
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Estimates on the number of deaths brought about by Stalin's rule are hotly debated by scholars in the field of Soviet studies. According to Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Stalin's regime can be charged with causing the "purposive deaths" of about a million people, although the number of deaths caused by the regime's "criminal neglect" and "ruthlessness" was considerably higher, and perhaps exceed Hitler's.[28] (Wheatcroft excludes all famine deaths as "purposive deaths." However, Ellman concludes that some of these deaths constitute (mass) murder.[29][30] And Rosefielde argues that Wheatcroft's estimate of one million "purposive deaths" is too conservative.[31]) Many scholars and historians, among them Stalin biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore, former Politburo member Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev and the director of Yale's "Annals of Communism" series Jonathan Brent, put the death toll at about 20 million.[32] Robert Conquest, in the latest revision (2007) of his book The Great Terror, estimates that Communist leaders of the USSR were responsible for 13–15 million deaths including man-made famines, revised downward from 20-30 million.[33] Conquest's older estimates are considered exaggerations by some other scholars such as Wheatcroft.[34] Robert Conquest agrees his older estimates were too high, but also asserts that Wheatcroft's estimates are too low.[35]
Red Terror
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Polish-soviet_propaganda_poster_1920.jpg/220px-Polish-soviet_propaganda_poster_1920.jpg)
During the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, both sides unleashed terror campaings (the Red and White Terrors, accordingly). The Red Terror culminated in the summary execution of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people" by the political police, the Cheka.[36][37][38][39] Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.[40] One of the largest massacres of the civil war[41] involved the shooting and hanging of some 50,000 White officers and civilians after general Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel was put down at the end of 1920.[42][43] The policy of decossackization was the first example of Soviet leaders attempting to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[44] On January 24, 1919 the Central Committee issued the order to "carry out mass terror against wealthy Cossacks, exterminating all of them; carry out merciless mass terror against any and all Cossacks taking part in any way, directly or indirectly, in the struggle against Soviet power."[45] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[46][47] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.[48]
Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions."[49]
In 1918, during the Red Terror, the Bolsheviks executed nearly 3,000 Orthodox clergymen of all ranks.[50] Another 8,000 were killed during the conflict over church valuables in 1922.[51] During this conflict, Lenin himself stated: "The greater the number of the representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the reactionary clergy that we will manage to execute in this affair, the better."[52]
Great purge (Yezhovshchina)
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Left: Beria's January 1940 letter to Stalin, asking permission to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and of the Soviet authorities" who conducted "counter-revolutionary, right-Trotskyite plotting and spying activities" Middle: Stalin's handwriting: "за" (support). Right: The Politburo's decision is signed by Secretary Stalin |
Stalin's attempts to solidify his position as leader of the Soviet Union lead to an escalation in detentions and executions of various people, climaxing in 1937–38 (a period sometimes referred to as the "Yezhovshchina," or Yezhov era), and continuing until Stalin's death in 1953. Around 700,000 of these were executed by a gunshot to the back of the head,[53] others perished from beatings and torture while in "investigative custody"[54] and in the Gulag due to starvation, disease, exposure and overwork.[55] Some prisoners were gassed to death in batches in the back of a specially adapted airtight van disguised as a bread truck.[56][57] Arrests were typically made citing counter-revolutionary laws, which included failure to report treasonous actions and, in an amendment added in 1937, failing to fulfill one's appointed duties.
In the cases investigated by the State Security Department of the NKVD (GUGB NKVD) October 1936–November 1938:
- At least 1,710,000 people were arrested.
- At least 1,440,000 people were sentenced.
- At least 724,000 people were executed. Among those executed:
- At least 436,000 people were sentenced to death by NKVD troikas as part of the Kulak Operation.
- At least 247,000 people were sentenced to death by NKVD Dvoikas and the Local Special Troikas as part of the Ethnic Operation.
- At least 41,000 people were sentenced to death by Military Courts.[58]
Stalin personally signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 for more than 40,000 people, and about 90% of these were shot.[29] While reviewing one such list, he reportedly remarked "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one. Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one."[59]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Vinnycia16.jpg/270px-Vinnycia16.jpg)
Regarding the persecution of clergy, Professor Michael Ellman states "...the 1937 – 38 terror against the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and of other religions (Binner & Junge 2004) might also qualify as genocide as defined in the Convention (‘killing members of the group . . . with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a . . . religious group’)."[29] Citing church documents, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev has estimated that over 100,000 priests, monks and nuns were executed during this time.[61]
National operations of the NKVD
According to professor Michael Ellman, the National operations of the NKVD, which targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities), such as Poles, Ethnic Germans, Koreans, etc, may constitute genocide as defined by the UN convention.[29] A total of 350,000 were arrested and 247,157 were executed.[62] Of these, the Polish operation appears to have been the largest, with 140,000 arrests and 111,000 executions out of a (Polish) population of 636,000. Stalin biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore concurs with this view, and referred to the Polish operation as 'a mini-genocide.'[63]
Great purge in Mongolia
In the summer and autumn of 1937, Stalin sent NKVD agents to the Mongolian People's Republic and engineered a Mongolian Great Terror[64] in which some 22,000[65] and 35,000[66] people were executed. Around 18,000 victims were Buddhist lamas.[65]
Soviet killings during WWII
In September 1939, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied it in accordance with the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Immediately NKVD task forces followed the Red Army to remove "Soviet-hostile elements" from the conquered territories.[67] The NKVD systematically practiced torture, especially in small towns, which often resulted in death, with victims being scalded in boiling water and having their noses, ears, and fingers cut off and eyes put out.[68][69] The most notorious killings occurred in the spring of 1940, when the NKVD executed some 21,857 Polish POW's and intellectual leaders on the orders of Stalin and Beria in what has become known as the Katyn massacre,[70] with some 6,000 of these being shot by Stalin's chief executioner, Vasili Blokhin.[71][72] According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, 150,000 Polish citizens perished due to Soviet repression during the war. [73][74]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/PlaqueMemorizingEstonianGovernment.jpg/250px-PlaqueMemorizingEstonianGovernment.jpg)
After the Soviets annexed the Baltic states in accordance with the pact, they killed some Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians.[75]
During the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, the NKVD and attached units of the Red Army massacred prisoners and political opponents by the tens of thousands before fleeing from the advancing Axis forces.[76]
People's Republic of China
The Chinese Communist Party came to power in China in 1949, when Chinese Communist Revolution ended a long and bloody civil war between communists and nationalists. There is a general consensus among historians that after seizing power by Mao Zedong, his policies and political purges, such as the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and land reform, caused directly or indirectly the deaths of tens of millions of people.[77][78] Based on the Soviets' experience, Mao considered violence necessary to achieve an ideal society derived from Marxism and planned and executed violence on a grand scale.[79][80]
Land reform and the suppression of counterrevolutionaries
The first large-scale killings under Mao took place during land reform and the counterrevolutionary campaign. In official study materials published in 1948, Mao envisaged that "one-tenth of the peasants" (or about 50,000,000) "would have to be destroyed" to facilitate agrarian reform.[79][80] Jen Pi-shih, a member of the party's Central Committee, likewise stated in a 1948 speech that "30,000,000 landlords and rich peasants would have to be destroyed".[79] Actual numbers killed in land reform are believed to have been lower, but did rank in the millions.[79] Rummel gives a "reasonably conservative figure" of about 4,500,000 landlords and better-off peasants killed.[79] Philip Short states that at least 1 to 3 million landlords and members of their families were killed, often beaten to death by enraged peasants at mass meetings organized by party work teams.[81] Estimates abroad ranged as high as 28,000,000 deaths; Mao estimated that 800,000 landlords were killed during land reform.[79]
The suppression of counterrevolutionaries targeted mainly former Kuomintang officials and intellectuals suspected of disloyalty.[82] At least 712,000 people were executed, 1,290,000 were imprisoned in labor camps and 1,200,000 were "subject to control at various times."[83] Mao personally set execution quotas.[84] For example, he gave these instructions to party cadre in Guangdong on January 22, 1951: ‘‘It is very good that you have already killed more than 3,700. Another three to four thousand should be killed . . . the target for this year’s executions may be eight or nine thousand."[83]
The Great Leap Forward
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.[85] 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[86] 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 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 Zedong's Great Leap Forward had reorganized the workforce; millions of agricultural workers were diverted to the iron and steel production workforce, whose output was useless.[87]
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.[88] In spite of this, China was a net grain exporter from 1958-60. This left little or none for the local populace.[87] Government officials were indifferent to the people dying around them, as their top priority was the delivery of grain.[87] Over a million people died in Xinyang, even though Henan's granaries held 1.25 million tonnes of grain and the neighbouring province of Hebei held 650,000 tonnes.[87] Mao refused to open the granaries for the starving peasants because he believed they were lying and that rightists and kulaks were hoarding grain.[89] He was dismissive of reports he received of food shortages in the countryside and launched a series of "anti-grain concealment" drives which resulted in many peasants being tortured and beaten to death by Communist officials who went from village to village in search of this hidden grain.[90][91]
As a result of the Sino-Soviet split, Mao decided to pay back early to the USSR a debt of 1.973 billion yuan, much of it in the form of grain.[87] Exports to the Soviet Union increased by 50% during the famine years.[89]
Like in the Soviet Union during the famine of 1932 and 1933, peasants were confined to their starving villages by a system of household registration,[nb 12] and the the worst of the famine was steered towards the regime's enemies.[nb 13] Those labeled as "black elements" (religious leaders, rightists, rich peasants, etc.) in any previous campaign died in the greatest numbers, as they were given the lowest priority in the allocation of food.[nb 14]
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.[87] Yang declares that the famine "was man-made. There was small-scale violence against the shortages and an increase in crime by the hungry but nothing large and organised. People were terrorised and did not dare oppose the government and the army." This was a result of the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late 1950s that created a sense of fear in which no one dared oppose government policy.[87]
Professors and scholars of the Great Chinese Famine, who use 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.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Historian and China specialist Roderick MacFarquhar estimated that around a million people were killed in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.[92] Mao's Red Guards were given carte blanche to abuse and kill the revolution's enemies.[93] For example, in August 1966, over 100 teachers were murdered by their students in western Beijing alone.[94] In some regions the violence took on bizarre forms, such as in Guangxi, where political cannibalism was practiced on a significant scale, with the approval of local party cadre.[95][96]
Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea)
Helen Fein, a genocide scholar, noted that, although Cambodian leaders declared adherence to an exotic version of agrarian Communist doctrine, the xenophobic ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime resembles more a phenomenon of national socialism, or fascism.[97] Sociologist Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era".[98] The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War. At least 200,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge[99] (while estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 million).[100]
Democratic Kampuchea experienced serious hardships due to the effects of war and disrupted economic activity. According to Michael Vickery, 740,800 people in Cambodia in a population of about 7 million died due to disease, overwork, and political repression.[101] Other estimates suggest approximately 1.7 million and it is described by the Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program as "one of the worst human tragedies of the last century."[102] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After 5 years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,112,829 victims of execution."[101] Following the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge they received aid and assistance from the United States government. While the US was aware of their genocide they supported them as a check on Vietnamese power.[103]
In 1997 the Cambodian Government asked the United Nations assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal.[104][105][106] The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007.[104] On 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not charged with genocide. He will face Cambodian and foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal.[107]
Others
Democratic People's Republic of Korea
In his book Statistics of Democide, Rudolph Rummel estimates that from 710,000 to slightly over 3,500,000 people have been murdered in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea between 1948 through 1987.[108]
People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Amnesty International estimates that a total of half a million people were killed during the Red Terror of 1977 and 1978[109][110][111] During the terror groups of people were herded into churches that were then burned down, and women were subjected to systematic rape by soldiers.[112] The Save the Children Fund reported that the victims of the Red Terror included not only adults, but 1,000 or more children, mostly aged between eleven and thirteen, whose corpses were left in the streets of Addis Ababa.[109] Mengistu himself is alleged to have killed political opponents with his bare hands.[113]
Controversies
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Although it is frequently considered as an example of Communist genocide, Democratic Republic of Afghanistan represents a borderline case, according to Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago.[9] This state was never clearly stabilized as a communist regime, but rather in a constant state of war.
In his book The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982, M. Hassan Kakar presents the argument that the international definition of genocide is too restricted, and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator as described by Chalk and Jonassohn: “Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.”[114]
Having established a broader definition of Genocide, Kakar goes on to claim that during the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), "The Afghans are among the latest victims of genocide by a superpower. Large numbers of Afghans were killed to suppress resistance to the army of the Soviet Union, which wished to vindicate its client regime and realize its goal in Afghanistan. Thus, the mass killing was political."[114]
Evidence indicates there was a deliberate and systematic policy of killing civilians.[nb 15]Such incidents were too common and too methodical to have been the result of frustrated or unruly troops.[1] By the time the Soviets withdrew in 1988, 1 to 1.5 million people had been killed, mostly Afghan civilians, and one-third of Afghanistan's population had been displaced.[1] Recently mass graves of executed prisoners have been uncovered dating back to the Soviet era.[115]
Prior to the Soviet invasion, the Afghan Commnists unleashed a wave of repression that resulted in the killing of 10,000 people linked to the former regime, including the president and 17 members of his family, and the imprisonment of some 14,000 to 20,000 more.[1]
Holodomor
Within the Soviet Union, changes in agricultural policies (collectivization) and severe droughts caused the Soviet famine of 1932–1933.[116][117][118][119] The famine was most severe in the Ukrainian SSR, where it is[by whom?] often referenced as the Holodomor. A significant portion of the famine victims (3-3.5 million) were Ukrainians while the total number of victims in the Soviet Union is estimated to be 6 - 8 millions[120][121][30] . At the time, the Soviet government tried to suppress information about the famine and the Western powers demonstrated their indifference (in contrast to what happened during famines of 1921 and 1947). Some scholars have argued that the Stalinist policies that caused the famine may have been designed as an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism, and thus may fall under the legal definition of genocide (see Holodomor genocide question).[116][117][122][123][124] Economist Michael Ellman argues that the actions of the Soviet regime from 1930–34, from the standpoint of international criminal law, "clearly constitutes . . . a series of crimes against humanity" and perhaps even genocide, but only if a more relaxed definition of the term is adopted. Ellman also states that from the standpoint of national criminal law, some of the famine deaths could constitute murder:
"Since the death of some of them was a natural consequence of turning back peasants fleeing from starvation and of exporting grain during a famine, the only way of defending Stalin from (mass) murder is to argue that he did not foresee that preventing peasants fleeing from the most severely affected regions and exporting grain would cause additional deaths."[29]
Benjamin Valentino also notes that "there is strong evidence that Soviet authorities used hunger as a weapon to crush peasant resistance to collectivization" and that "deaths associated with these kinds of policies meet the criteria for mass killing because the regimes in question deliberately created conditions that they reasonably could have expected to result in widespread death."[nb 16]
In 2002 the Ukranian President Kuchma signed a presidential decree asserting that the famine of 1932–33 had in fact been 'genocide' against the Ukrainian nation. A parliamentary resolution in 2003 reiterated this view. In November 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill branding the Holodomor an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.[125] As of March 2008, the Ukraine and between eleven and nineteen other governments have recognized the actions of the Soviet government as an act of genocide.[126] The Russian government vehemently rejects the idea of the Holodomor as genocide., as well as in Ukraine which was accused of politicization of the tragedy, outright propaganda and fabrication of documents[127] In 2009 the Council of Europe said that a famine that killed millions in the Soviet Union in the 1930s cannot be described as a genocide that targeted the Ukrainian people.[128]
Mass deportations of ethnic minorities
The Soviet government during Stalin's rule conducted a series of deportations on an enormous scale which significantly affected the ethnic map of the USSR. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official reasons for the deportations, rightly or wrongly. Deportations took place under extremely harsh conditions, often in cattle carriages, with hundreds of thousands of deportees dying en route.[129] Sometimes the deported were delivered to places without and living amenities amid winter. Some experts estimate the number of deaths from the deportations in certain cases could be as high as 1 in 3.[130][131] People from the following ethnic groups were forcibly resettled for various reasons: Volga Germans, Poles, Balts, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Koreans, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks. Large numbers of Kulaks, regardless of their nationality, were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia.[129] Regarding the fate of the Crimean Tatars, Amir Weiner of Stanford University writes that the policy could be classified as "ethnic cleansing". But it is[by whom?] concluded that the policy was not genocide because there was no intent to kill off the Crimean Tatars in an attack.[132] In the book Century of Genocide, Lyman H Legters writes "We cannot properly speak of a completed genocide, only of a process that was genocidal in its potentiality."[133] In Death by Government, R.J. Rummel classifies "forced deportations and expulsions causing deaths" as democide as it shows a "depraved disregard for life (which constitutes practical intentionality)."[134]
Socialist Republic of Romania
In 2006, the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania estimated the number of direct victims of communist repression at two million people.[135][136] This number does not include people who died in liberty as a result of their treatment in communist prisons, nor does it include people who died because of the dire economic circumstances in which the country found itself.
Tibet
According to The Black Book of Communism, the Chinese Communists carried out a cultural genocide against the Tibetans. Jean-Louis Margolin states that the killings were proportionally larger in Tibet than China proper, and that "one can legitimately speak of genocidal massacres because of the numbers involved."[137] According to the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration, "Tibetans were not only shot, but also were beaten to death, crucified, burned alive, drowned, mutilated, starved, strangled, hanged, boiled alive, buried alive, drawn and quartered, and beheaded."[137]
Legal sanctions and prosecution for genocide
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Katy%C5%84%2C_ekshumacja_ofiar.jpg/220px-Katy%C5%84%2C_ekshumacja_ofiar.jpg)
While Ethiopia's former ruler Mengistu has been convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by an Ethiopian court for his role in the Red Terror, and the highest ranking surviving member of the Khmer Rouge has been charged with those crimes,[107][138][139] no communist country or governing body has ever been convicted of genocide. Charges of genocide have been brought against a Khmer Rouge leader. One conviction for genocide has been obtained against a communist leader, Ethiopian Mengistu Haile Mariam;[140] Ethiopian law is distinct from the UN and other definitions in that it defines genocide as intent to wipe out political and not just ethnic groups. In this respect it closely resembles the distinction of politicide.[141]
According to the laws in Czech Republic the person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves or tries to justify nazi or communist genocide or other crimes of nazis or communists will be punished by prison of 6 months to 3 years.[142] In March 2005, the Polish Sejm unanimously requested Russia to classify the Katyn massacre, the execution of over 21,000 Polish POW's and intellectual leaders by Stalin's NKVD, as a crime of genocide.[143] Alexander Savenkov of the Prosecutor's General Office of the Russian Federation responded: "The version of genocide was examined, and it is my firm conviction that there is absolutely no basis to talk about this in judicial terms."[144]
In August 2007, Arnold Meri, an Estonian Red Army veteran and cousin of former Estonian president Lennart Meri, faced charges of genocide by Estonian authorities for participating in the deportations of Estonians in Hiiumaa in 1949.[145][146] The trial was halted when Meri died March 27, 2009, at the age of 89. Meri denied the accusation, characterizing them as politically motivated defamation: "I do not consider myself guilty of genocide.", he said.[147]
See also
- Communist terrorism
- Criticisms of Communist party rule
- Dekulakization
- Forced settlements in the Soviet Union
- Gulag
- Laogai
- Extermination through labor
- Mass graves in the Soviet Union
- NKVD special camps
- Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union
- Soviet war crimes
- Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
- Victims of Communism Memorial
- Anti-communist mass killings
Notes and references
- Footnotes
- ^ Valentino p.9 .
Mass killing and Genocide. No generally accepted terminology exists to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants.
{{cite book}}
: Missing or empty|title=
(help)[1] - ^ Valentino p.91 [1]
- ^ Midlarsky p.310 .
Indeed, an arc of Communist politicide can be traced from the western portions of the Soviet Union to China and on to to Cambodia.
{{cite book}}
: Missing or empty|title=
(help) [11] - ^ Valentino p.91[1]
- ^ Valentino pp.34–37[1]
- ^ Valentino p. 93 [1]
- ^ Weiss-Wendt p.557[24]
- ^ Weiss-Wendt pp.555-226[24]
- ^ Weiss-Wendt pp. 554-556[24]
- ^ Weiss-Wendt p551, 553-6[24]
- ^ Weiss-Wendt p.552[24]
- ^ Valentino[1]
- ^ Valentino p. 128 [1]
- ^ Valentino p.128[1]
- ^ Valentino p.196 [1]
- ^ Valentino p.99[1]
- References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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}}
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|chapterurl=
ignored (|chapter-url=
suggested) (help) - ^ a b c Stephen Wheatcroft. The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 48, No. 8 (Dec., 1996), pp. 1319-1353
- ^ Beth van Schaack. The Crime of Political Genocide: Repairing the Genocide Convention's Blind Spot. The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 106, No. 7 (May, 1997), pp. 2259-2291
- ^ Gurr, Barbara (1988). "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945". 32: 359–371.
{{cite journal}}
:|first2=
missing|last2=
(help); Cite journal requires|journal=
(help); Text "journal" ignored (help) - ^ R.J. Rummel. Death by Government Chapter 2: Definition of Democide
- ^ Semelin, Jacques (2009). "Destroying to Eradicate". Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide. Columbia University Press. p. 318. ISBN 0231142838, 9780231142830.
{{cite book}}
: Check|isbn=
value: invalid character (help) - ^ Mann, Michael (2005). "The Argument". The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge University Press. p. 17. ISBN 0521538548, 9780521538541.
{{cite book}}
: Check|isbn=
value: invalid character (help) - ^ a b “Draining the Sea”: Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, Dylan Balch-Lindsay. Mass Killing and Guerrilla Warfare. International Organization 58, Spring 2004, pp. 375–407
- ^ a b Wayman, Frank; Tago, Atsushi (2005), "Explaining the Onset of Mass Killing:The Effect of War, Regime Type, and Economic Deprivation on Democide and Politicide, 1949–1987", International Studies Association http://hei.unige.ch/sections/sp/agenda/colloquium/Wayman_TagoJPR0903.pdf
{{citation}}
: Missing or empty|title=
(help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Fein, Helen (1993). Genocide: a sociological perspective. Sage Publication. p. 75. ISBN 9780803988293.
{{cite book}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ Midlarsky, Manus I (2005). Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 9780521815451 http://books.google.com/books?id=-oJuL_gcFHMC&pg=PA310&dq.
{{cite book}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameters:|chapterurl=
and|coauthors=
(help); Missing or empty|title=
(help); Text "The killing trap: genocide in the twentieth century" ignored (help) - ^ Midlarsky, Manus (2005). The killing trap: genocide in the twentieth century. Cambridge University Press. p. 321. ISBN 0521815452.
- ^ Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. PublicAffairs, 2009. ISBN 1586487698 p. 54: "...in the past century communist regimes, led and inspired by the Soviet Union and China, have killed more people than any other regime type."
- ^ Totten, Samuel (2002). Pioneers of genocide studies. Transaction Publishers. p. 168. ISBN 0765801515.
{{cite book}}
: Unknown parameter|coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (help) - ^ a b Weitz, 251-252.
- ^ Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0300087608 page 20
- ^ Barry Ray. FSU professor's 'Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler' sheds new light on three of the 20th century's bloodiest rulers. Florida State University, 2007
- ^ Sheila Fitzpatrick. The Russian Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0199237670 p. 77
- ^ Daniel Chirot, Clark R. McCauley, Why not kill them all?: the logic and prevention of mass political murder, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, presents a generalised theory of mass killing without reference to ideological determinants.
- ^ Gray, John (1990). "Totalitarianism, civil society and reform". In Ellen Frankel Paul (ed.). Totalitarianism at the crossroads. Transaction Publisher. p. 116ISBN=9780887388507.
- ^ a b Watson, George (1998). The Lost Literature of Socialism. Lutterworth press. ISBN 9780718829865.
- ^ Watson, George, The Lost Literature of Socialism, page 80. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1998. ISBN 0718829867, 9780718829865, 112 pages
- ^ a b Grant, Robert (Nov., 1999). "Review: The Lost Literature of Socialism". The Review of English Studies. 50 (200). New Series: 557–559.
{{cite journal}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help) - ^ a b c d e f Anton Weiss-Wendt, "Hostage of Politics: Raphael Lemkin on “Soviet Genocide”" Journal of Genocide Research (2005), 7(4), 551–559 Article hosted at inogs.com
- ^ a b c d Stéphane Courtois, "Introduction: The Crimes of Communism" In Eds. Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer, The black book of communism: crimes, terror, repression (Harvard University Press 1999): 1–32. ISBN0674076087.
- ^ a b c Stéphane Courtois, "Conclusion: Why?" In Eds. Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer, The black book of communism: crimes, terror, repression Harvard University Press 1999): 727–758, ISBN0674076087.
- ^ a b Martin Malia, "Foreword: Uses of Attrocity" In Eds. Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer, The black book of communism: crimes, terror, repression (Harvard University Press 1999): 1–32. ISBN0674076087
- ^ Stephen Wheatcroft. The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 48, No. 8 (Dec., 1996), pp. 1319-1353
- ^ a b c d e Michael Ellman, Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited Europe-Asia Studies, Routledge. Vol. 59, No. 4, June 2007, 663–693. PDF file
- ^ a b Ellman, Michael (2005). "The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1934" (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies. 57 (6). Routledge: 823–41. Retrieved 2008-07-04.
{{cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter|month=
ignored (help) - ^ Steven Rosefielde. Documented Homicides and Excess Deaths: New Insights into the Scale of Killing in the USSR during the 1930s. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp 321-333, 1997. University of California: "Wheatcroft’s estimate of one million includes executions after the January 1939 census until Stalin’s death in 1953. This low number is derived by undercounting the gulag population, and hence prison, camp and transit deaths (cf. Rosefielde, 1996a), disregarding extrajudicial killings, the gulag military suicide troops in WWII, and treating all other excess deaths (primarily peasants) as lesser crimes."
- ^ Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. pp. 649: "Perhaps 20 million had been killed, 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags.". See also: Dmitri Volkogonov. Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime. pp. 139: "Between 1929 and 1953 the state created by Lenin and set in motion by Stalin deprived 21.5 million Soviet citizens of their lives.". and Alexander N. Yakovlev (2002). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. pp. 234: "My own many years and experience in the rehabilitation of victims of political terror allow me to assert that the number of people in the USSR who were killed for political motives or who died in prisons and camps during the entire period of Soviet power totaled 20 to 25 million. And unquestionably one must add those who died of famine– more than 5.5 million during the civil war and more than 5 million during the 1930s.". and Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1400040051 p. 584: "More recent estimations of the Soviet-on-Soviet killing have been more 'modest' and range between ten and twenty million." and Stéphane Courtois. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999. p. 4: "U.S.S.R.: 20 million deaths." and Jonathan Brent, Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia. Atlas & Co., 2008 (ISBN 0977743330) Introduction online (PDF file): Estimations on the number of Stalin's victims over his twenty-five year reign, from 1928 to 1953, vary widely, but 20 million is now considered the minimum.
- ^ Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, 40th Anniversary Edition, Oxford University Press, 2007, in Preface.
- ^ S. G. Wheatcroft. The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and Its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 6 (Sep., 2000), pp. 1143-1159
- ^ Robert Conquest. Comment on Wheatcroft. Europe-Asia Studies, 1999.
- ^ Sergei Petrovich Melgunov, The Red Terror in Russia, Hyperion Pr (1975), ISBN 0-883-55187-X See also: The Record of the Red Terror
- ^ Lincoln, W. Bruce, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War (1999) Da Capo Press.pp. 383–385 ISBN 0-306-80909-5
- ^ Leggett, George (1987). The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police. Oxford University Press. pp. 197–198. ISBN 0198228627.
- ^ Orlando Figes. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891 — 1924. Penguin Books, 1997 ISBN 0198228627 p. 647
- ^ Orlando Figes. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891 — 1924. Penguin Books, 1997 ISBN 0198228627 p. 643
- ^ 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, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7 p. 100
- ^ Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1400040051 p. 72
- ^ Donald Rayfield. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. Random House, 2004. ISBN 0375506322 p. 83
- ^ 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, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7 p. 98
- ^ Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-300-08760-8 p. 100
- ^ Peter Holquist. "Conduct merciless mass terror": decossackization on the Don, 1919"
- ^ Orlando Figes. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924. Penguin Books, 1998. ISBN 014024364X p. 660
- ^ Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1400040051 pp. 70–71.
- ^ Donald Rayfield. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. Random House, 2004. ISBN 0375506322 p. 85
- ^ Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0300087608 page 156
- ^ Richard Pipes. Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage Books, 1994 ISBN 0679761845 pg 356
- ^ Richard Pipes. Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage, 1995, ISBN 0679761845 pg 352
- ^ Barry McLoughlin (2002). Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 141. ISBN 1403901198.
{{cite book}}
: Unknown parameter|coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (help) - ^ Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Knopf, 2007. ISBN 1400040051 p. 256
- ^ Ellman, Michael (2002). "Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments". Europea-Asia Studies. 34 (7): 1151–1172.
The best estimate that can currently be made of the number of repression deaths in 1937–38 is the range 950,000–1.2 million, i.e. about a million. This is the estimate which should be used by historians, teachers and journalists concerned with twentieth century Russian—and world—history
- ^ Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia by Catherine Merridale. Penguin Books, 2002 ISBN 0142000639 p. 200
- ^ Timothy J. Colton. Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis. Belknap Press, 1998. ISBN 0674587499 p. 286
- ^ N.G. Okhotin, A.B. Roginsky "Great Terror": Brief Chronology Memorial, 2007
- ^ Hiroaki Kuromiya, The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s. Yale University Press, 24 December 2007. ISBN 0300123892 p. 5
- ^ Stéphane Courtois. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999.
- ^ Alexander N. Yakovlev (2002). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. p. 165. See also: Richard Pipes (2001). Communism: A History. Modern Library Chronicles. p. 66.
- ^ Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, 2004 ISBN 1-4000-4230-5 p. 229
- ^ Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin. The Court of the Red Tsar. Vintage Books, New York 2003. Vintage ISBN 1-4000-7678-1 page 229.
- ^ Hiroaki Kuromiya, The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s. Yale University Press, 24 December 2007. ISBN 0300123892 p. 2
- ^ a b Christopher Kaplonski, Thirty thousand bullets, in: Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe, London 2002, p.155-168
- ^ Twentieth Century Atlas – Death Tolls
- ^ Interview with Tomasz Strzembosz: Die verschwiegene Kollaboration Transodra, 23. Dezember 2001, P. 2 Template:De icon
- ^ Jan T. Gross. Revolution From Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN 0691096031 pp. 181-182
- ^ Paul, Allen. Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Resurrection. Naval Institute Press, 1996. ISBN 1557506701 p. 155
- ^ Fischer, Benjamin B., "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field". "Studies in Intelligence", Winter 1999–2000. Retrieved on 10 December 2005.
- ^ Parrish, Michael (1996). The Lesser Terror: Soviet state security, 1939–1953. Westport, CT: Praeger Press. pp. 324 & 325. ISBN 0275951138.
- ^ Montefiore, Simon Sebag (2005-09-13). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 197 & 198, 332 & 334. ISBN 9781400076789.
- ^ "Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll". AFP/Expatica. 30 July 2009. Retrieved 4 November 2009.
- ^ Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota. Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami.Institute of National Remembrance(IPN) Warszawa 2009 ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6
- ^ Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. p. 334.
- ^ Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1400040051 p. 391
- ^ Short, Philip (2001). Mao: A Life. Owl Books. p. 631. ISBN 0805066381.; Chang, Jung and Halliday, Jon. Mao: The Unknown Story. Jonathan Cape, London, 2005. ISBN 0-224-07126-2 p. 3; Rummel, R. J. China’s Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 Transaction Publishers, 1991. ISBN 0-88738-417-X p. 205: In light of recent evidence, Rummel has increased Mao's democide toll to 77 million.
- ^ Fenby, Jonathan. Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present. Ecco, 2008. ISBN 0-06-166116-3 p. 351"Mao’s responsibility for the extinction of anywhere from 40 to 70 million lives brands him as a mass killer greater than Hitler or Stalin, his indifference to the suffering and the loss of humans breathtaking."
- ^ a b c d e f Rummel, Rudolph J. (2007). China's bloody century: genocide and mass murder since 1900. Transaction Publishers. p. 223. ISBN 9781412806701.
- ^ a b Goldhagen, Worse than War, p. 344
- ^ Short, Philip (2001). Mao: A Life. Owl Books. pp. 436–437. ISBN 0805066381.
- ^ Steven W. Mosher. China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality. Basic Books, 1992. ISBN 0465098134 pp 72, 73
- ^ a b Yang Kuisong. Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries The China Quarterly, 193, March 2008, pp.102-121. PDF file.
- ^ Changyu, Li. "Mao's "Killing Quotas." Human Rights in China (HRIC) 26 September 2005, Shandong University" (PDF).
- ^ Asia times online
- ^ The People's Republic of China 1949–76, second edition, Michael Lynch (London: Hodder Education, 2008), p. 57
- ^ a b c d e f g "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
- ^ "What caused the great Chinese famine?" (PDF). 2000-01-01. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
- ^ a b Jasper Becker. Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. Holt Paperbacks, 1998. ISBN 0805056688 p. 81
- ^ Jasper Becker. Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. Holt Paperbacks, 1998. ISBN 0805056688 p. 86
- ^ Jasper Becker. Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. Holt Paperbacks, 1998. ISBN 0805056688 p. 93
- ^ MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006. p. 262
- ^ MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006. p. 125
- ^ The Chinese Cultural Revolution: Remembering Mao's Victims by Andreas Lorenz in Beijing, Der Spiegel Online. May 15, 2007
- ^ MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006. p. 259
- ^ Zheng Yi Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China. Westview Press, 1998. ISBN 0813326168
- ^ Helen Fein. Revolutionary and Antirevolutionary Genocides: A Comparison of State Murders in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975 to 1979, and in Indonesia, 1965 to 1966. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 796-823
- ^ Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution by Martin Shaw, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp 141, ISBN 9780521597302
- ^ Chandler, David. The Killing Fields. At The Digital Archive Of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors. [1]
- ^ Peace Pledge Union Information – Talking about genocides – Cambodia 1975 – the genocide.
- ^ a b Sharp, Bruce (2005-04-01). "Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia". Retrieved 2006-07-05.
- ^ The CGP, 1994–2008 Cambodian Genocide Program, Yale University
- ^ Governments, citizens, and genocide: a comparative and interdisciplinary approach (2001), Alex Alvarez, p.6[2]
- ^ a b Doyle, Kevin. Putting the Khmer Rouge on Trial, Time, July 26, 2007
- ^ MacKinnon, Ian Crisis talks to save Khmer Rouge trial, The Guardian, 7 March 2007
- ^ The Khmer Rouge Trial Task Forc, Royal Cambodian Government
- ^ a b Staff, Senior Khmer Rouge leader charged, BBC 19 September 2007
- ^ Rummel, Rudolph (1998). Statistics of democide: genocide and mass murder since 1900. LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster. p. 178. ISBN 3825840107.
- ^ a b The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, pg 457
- ^ US admits helping Mengistu escape BBC, 22 December 1999
- ^ Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators by Riccardo Orizio, pg 151
- ^ Stephane Courtois, et al. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999. pg. 692
- ^ Guilty of genocide: the leader who unleashed a 'Red Terror' on Africa by Jonathan Clayton, The Times Online, 13 December 2006
- ^ a b M. Hassan Kakar Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 University of California press © 1995 The Regents of the University of California.
- ^ In pictures: Afghan mass grave BBC, July 5, 2007
- ^ a b Dr. David Marples, The great famine debate goes on..., ExpressNews (University of Alberta), originally published in Edmonton Journal, November 30, 2005
- ^ a b Stanislav Kulchytsky, "Holodomor of 1932–1933 as genocide: the gaps in the proof", Den, February 17, 2007, in Russian, in Ukrainian
- ^ С. Уиткрофт (Stephen G. Wheatcroft), "О демографических свидетельствах трагедии советской деревни в 1931—1933 гг." (On demographic evidence of the tragedy of the Soviet village in 1931-1833), "Трагедия советской деревни: Коллективизация и раскулачивание 1927–1939 гг.: Документы и материалы. Том 3. Конец 1930–1933 гг.", Российская политическая энциклопедия, 2001, ISBN 5-8243-0225-1, с. 885, Приложение № 2
- ^ 'Stalinism' was a collective responsibility – Kremlin papers, The News in Brief, University of Melbourne, 19 June 1998, Vol 7 No 22
- ^ "Ukraine – The famine of 1932–33". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
- ^ Davies and Wheatcroft, p. 401. For a review, see "Davies & Weatcroft, 2004" (PDF). Warwick.
- ^ Peter Finn, Aftermath of a Soviet Famine, The Washington Post, April 27, 2008, "There are no exact figures on how many died. Modern historians place the number between 2.5 million and 3.5 million. Yushchenko and others have said at least 10 million were killed."
- ^ Yaroslav Bilinsky (1999). "Was the Ukrainian Famine of 1932–1933 Genocide?". Journal of Genocide Research. 1 (2): 147–156. doi:10.1080/14623529908413948.
- ^ Stanislav Kulchytsky, "Holodomor-33: Why and how?", Zerkalo Nedeli, November 25 – December 1, 2006, in Russian, in Ukrainian.
- ^ Jan Maksymiuk, "Ukraine: Parliament Recognizes Soviet-Era Famine As Genocide", RFE/RL, November 29, 2006
- ^ 19 (according to Ukrainian BBC: "Латвія визнала Голодомор ґеноцидом"), 16 (according to Korrespondent, Russian edition: "После продолжительных дебатов Сейм Латвии признал Голодомор геноцидом украинцев"), "more than 10" (according to Korrespondent, Ukrainian edition: "Латвія визнала Голодомор 1932–33 рр. геноцидом українців")
- ^ http://www.regnum.ru/news/1138393.html
- ^ Holodomor cannot be termed genocide - PACE, Russia Today
- ^ a b Boobbyer, Phillip (2000), The Stalin Era, Routledge, ISBN 0767900561 p. 130
- ^ In one estimate, based on a report by Lavrenti Beria to Joseph Stalin, 150,000 of 478,479 deported Ingush and Chechen people (or 31.3 percent) died within the first four years of the resettlement. See: Kleveman, Lutz. The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia. Jackson, Tenn.: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003. ISBN 0871139065. Another scholar puts the number of deaths at 22.7 percent: Extrapolating from NKVD records, 113,000 Ingush and Chechens died (3,000 before deportation, 10,000 during deportation, and 100,000 after resettlement) in the first three years of the resettlement out of 496,460 total deportees. See: Naimark, Norman M. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN 0674009940. A third source says a quarter of the 650,000 deported Chechens, Ingush, Karachais and Kalmyks died within four years of resettlement. See: Mawdsley, Evan. The Stalin Years: The Soviet Union 1929–1953. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2003. ISBN 0719063779. However, estimates of the number of deportees sometimes varies widely. Two scholars estimated the number of Chechen and Ingush deportees at 700,000, which would have the percentage estimates of deaths. See: Fischer, Ruth and Leggett, John C. Stalin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party. Edison, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2006. ISBN 0878558225
- ^ Conquest, Robert. The Nation Killers. New York: Macmillan, 1970. ISBN 0333105753
- ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=KStML5rSbQ4C&pg=PA223
- ^ Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, Israel W. Charny. Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views. Garland, 1997 ISBN 0815323530 p. 120
- ^ Rummel, Rudolph (1997). Death by government. Transaction Publishers. p. 37. ISBN 1-56000-927-6.
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(help) at WWW.Hawaii.edu - ^ Recensământul populaţiei concentraţionare din România în anii 1945-1989 (Report) (in Romanian). Sighet: Centrul Internaţional de Studii asupra Comunismului. 2004.
- ^ Raportul Comisiei Prezidenţiale pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România (Report). Comisia Prezidenţială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România. 2006-12-15. pp. 215–217.
- ^ a b 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. 545-546.
- ^ "BBC, "Mengistu found guilty of genocide," 12 December 2006". 2006-12-12. Retrieved 2010-01-02.
- ^ Backgrounders: Ethiopian Dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam Human Rights Watch, 1999
- ^ Tsegaye Tadesse. Verdict due for Ethiopia's ex-dictator Mengistu Reuters, 2006
- ^ Barbara Harff, "Recognizing Genocides and Politicides", in Genocide Watch 27 (Helen Fein ed., 1992) pp.37,38
- ^ {{cite web |url=http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=5&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=2202&TTL=Expanding_Holocaust_Denial_and_Legislation_Against_It |title=Expanding Holocaust Denial and Legislation
- ^ Polish government statement: Senate pays tribute to Katyn victims – 3/31/2005
- ^ Russia Says Katyn Executions Not Genocide
- ^ Entisen presidentin serkkua syytetään neuvostoajan kyydityksistä – Baltic Guide
- ^ Estonian charged with Communist genocide International Herald Tribune, August 23, 2007
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7978111.stm
References and further reading
- Applebaum, Anne (foreword) and Hollander, Paul (introduction and editor) (2006) From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States. Intercollegiate Studies Institute. ISBN 1932236783
- Barron, John (1977). Murder of A Gentle Land, The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia. Reader's Digest Press. p. 240. ISBN 0-88349-129-X.
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suggested) (help) - Courtois, Stephane (1999). [[The Black Book of Communism]]: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. p. 858. ISBN 0-674-07608-7.
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suggested) (help) - Deker, Nikolai (1958). Genocide in the USSR: studies in group destruction. Scarecrow Press.
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suggested) (help) - Fein, Helen (1993). "Soviet and Communist genocides and 'Democide'". Genocide: a sociological perspective; Contextual and Comparative Studies I: Ideological Genocides;. Sage Publications. ISBN 9780803988293.
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suggested) (help) - Goldhagen, Daniel (2009). Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. PublicAffairs. p. 608. ISBN 1586487698, 9781586487690.
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(help) - Pipes, Richard (2003). Communism: A History. Modern Library Chronicles. p. 175. ISBN 9780812968644.
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(help) - Rummel, Rudolph (1997). Death by government. Transaction Publishers. p. 496. ISBN 1-56000-927-6.
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(help) at WWW.Hawaii.edu - Sarup, Kamala (September 5, 2005). "Communist Genocide In Cambodia" (PDF). Genocide Watch. Retrieved September 30, 2009.
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(help) - Totten, Samuel (2008). Dictionary of genocide, Volume 1. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 534. ISBN 0313346429, 9780313346422.
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suggested) (help) - 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.
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suggested) (help) - Watson, George (1998). The Lost Literature of Socialism. Lutterworth press. ISBN 9780718829865.
- Weiss-Wendt, Anton (2005). "Hostage of Politics Raphael Lemkin on "Soviet Genocide"" (PDF). Journal of Genocide Research (7(4)): 551–559.
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ignored (help) - Weitz, Eric D. (2003). A century of genocide: utopias of race and nation. Princeton University Press. p. 360. ISBN 0691009139, 9780691009131.
External links
- "Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century". Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century.