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The Black Book of Communism

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The Black Book of Communism

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book which describes a history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including extrajudicial executions, deportations, and artificial famines. The book was originally published in 1997 in France under the title, Le Livre noir du communisme : Crimes, terreur, répression. In the United States it is published by Harvard University Press[1]

Authors

The book was authored by several European academics and specialists(p. 857-8) and edited by Stéphane Courtois.

  • Jean-Louis Margolin is a lecturer at the Université de Provence and a researcher as the Research Institute on Southeast Asia.
  • Sylvain Boulougue is a research associate at GEODE, Université Paris X.
  • Pascal Fontaine is a journalist with a special knowledge of Latin America.
  • Rémi Kauffer is a specialist in the history of intelligence, terrorism, and clandestine operations.
  • Pierre Rigoulet is a researcher at the Institut d'Histoire Sociale.
  • Yves Santamaria is a historian.

Martin Malia wrote the foreword to the English edition.

Introduction

The book Stalinism and Nazism: History and Memory Compared argues that the title echoes that of Ilya Ehrenburg's and Vasily Grossman's documentary record of the Nazi atrocities, The Black Book[3] (but in France, "Livre noir" is often used since more than a century[4]). The introduction, by editor Stéphane Courtois, asserts that "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government". Using unofficial estimates he cites a death toll which totals 94 million, not counting the "excess deaths" (decrease of the population due to lower than the expected birth rate). The breakdown of the number of deaths given by Courtois is as follows:

Courtois claims that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movement, including Nazism. The statistics of victims includes executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation, and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labor. It does not include "excess deaths" due to higher mortality or lower birth rates than expected of the population. Nor does it include China's compulsory abortion program.

A more detailed listing of the accusations of repressions committed in the Soviet Union under the regimes of Lenin and Stalin described in the book include:

Comparison of Communism and Nazism

Courtois compared Communism and Nazism as slightly different totalitarian systems. He wrote that Communist regimes have killed "approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million victims of Nazis" [7]. Courtois claims that Nazi Germany's methods of mass extermination were adopted from Soviet methods. As an example, he cited Nazi state official Rudolf Höss who organized the infamous death camp in Auschwitz. According to Höss[7],

"The Reich Security Head Office issued to the commandants a full collection of reports concerning the Russian concentration camps. These described in great detail the conditions in, and organization of, the Russian camps, as supplied by former prisoners who had managed to escape. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that the Russians, by their massive employment of forced labor, had destroyed whole peoples".

Courtois claims the Soviet genocides of peoples living in the Caucasus and exterminations of large social groups in Russia that were not very much different from similar policies by Nazis. Both Communist and Nazi systems deemed "a part of humanity unworthy of existence. The difference is that the Communist model is based on the class system, the Nazi model on race and territory." [7]. Courtois stated that [8]

:"The "genocide of a "class" may well be tantamount to the genocide of a "race" - the deliberate starvation of a child of a Ukrainian kulak as a result of the famine caused by Stalin's regime "is equal to" the starvation of a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto as a result of the famine caused by the Nazi regime".

He also added that "after 1945 the Jewish genocide became a byword for modern barbarism, the epitome of twentieth-century mass terror…More recently, a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has also prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world. After all, it seems scarcely plausible that the victors who had helped bring about the destruction of a genocidal apparatus might themselves have put the very same methods into practice. When faced with this paradox, people generally preferred to bury their heads in sand."

Reception

In France, the book provoked an uproar. In the editorial pages of newspapers, magazine articles, and intellectual reviews, the book's publication inspired both vehement support and denunciation.

Three of the other authors, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin and Karel Bartosek, sparked a debate in France when they publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois's opinions[9]. They rejected his equation of Soviet repression with Nazi genocide. Werth, a well-regarded French specialist on the Soviet Union, said there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and Communism. He told Le Monde, "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union" [10], and "The more you compare communism and nazism, the more the differences are obvious." [11] They also said that the numbers used by Courtois were wrong[12].

The book was also discussed among politicians. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was attacked on the floor of the National Assembly by right-wing opponents for his party's alliance with the Communist Party. Jospin expressed that he was proud of his Communist allies because they had always supported the struggles of the Left in the past, adding that the Communists never encroached on anyone's liberties. Communist Party leader Robert Hue concluded it was ludicrous and grotesque to ignore the accomplishments of his party while reducing the memory of Communism to a macabre tally sheet of crimes. [13]

Support

The Black Book of Communism received praise from American and British commercial media, including the Times Literary Supplement, New York Times Book Review, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, The New Republic, National Review and The Weekly Standard.[14]

The journalist Anne Applebaum calls it a "serious, scholarly history". Conservative historians like Martin Malia, writing in a British newspaper, says the book "advances a number of important analytical points."

Criticism

Questioning the estimated number of victims

The estimates for Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union range between 3.5 and 60 million,[15][16] and those for Mao Zedong's China range between 19.5 and 75 million.[15] The authors of the Black Book defend their estimates for the Soviet Union (20 million) and Eastern Europe (1 million) by stating that they made use of sources that were not available to previous researchers (the archives mentioned above). At the same time, the authors acknowledge that the estimates from China and other nations still ruled by communist parties are uncertain since their archives are still closed. French journalist Gilles Perrault, writing in an op-ed in Le Monde diplomatique has accused the author of having used incorrect data and of having manipulated figures.[17]

Argument that the book is one-sided

Amir Weiner of Stanford University characterizes the "Black Book" as seriously flawed, inconsistent, and prone to mere provocation. In particular, the authors are said to savage Marxist ideology.[18] The methodology of the authors has been criticized. Alexander Dallin writes that moral, legal, or political judgement hardly depends on the number of victims.[19]

Other historians point out that the book's account of violence in the 20th century is one-sided. It's argued that a similar chronicle of violence and death tolls can be constructed from an examination of colonialism and capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, the Black Book's Black Book's attribution of 1 million deaths to Communism while ignoring the U.S. role in Vietnam has been criticized a methodological flaw. [20]

Another criticism of the Black Book is the charge that it discusses the communist states alone, without making any sort of comparison to capitalist states. Critics have argued that capitalist countries could be held responsible for just as many deaths as communist states, or perhaps more (see The Black Book of Capitalism)[21][17] Noam Chomsky writes that Amartya Sen in the early 80s estimated "the excess of mortality" in India over China to be close to 4 million a year. Chomsky therefore argues that in India alone, the democratic capitalist "experiment" since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of Communism everywhere.[22].

Journalist Daniel Singer has also criticized the Black Book for discussing the faults of communist states while ignoring their supposed positive achievements; he says that "if you look at Communism as merely the story of crimes, terror and repression, to borrow the subtitle of the Black Book, you are missing the point." According to him, "The Soviet Union did not rest on the gulag alone. There was also enthusiasm, construction, the spread of education and social advancement for millions." He also argues that if communism can be blamed for famines, capitalism should be blamed for most or all deaths from poverty in the world at the present time.[23]

Arguments on methodology

Historian J. Arch Getty noted that famine accounted for more than half of Courtois's 100 million death toll. He believes that these famines were caused by the "stupidity or incompetence of the regime," and that the deaths resulting from the famines, as well as other deaths that "resulted directly or indirectly from government policy," should not be counted as if they were equivalent to intentional murders and executions.[24]

Mark Tauger disagrees with the authors' thesis that the famine of 1933 was artificial and genocidal. Tauger asserts that the authors' interpretation of the famine contains errors, misconceptions, and omissions that invalidate their arguments. [25]

Professor Alexander Dallin said the authors make no attempt to differentiate between intended crimes such as the Moscow show trials and policy choices that had unintended consequences such as the Chinese famine. [26]

Disputing the comparison of Nazism and Communism

Gilles Perrault, writing in Le Monde diplomatique has described the comparison between communism and Nazism as "disgraceful".[17] However other authors, such as Vladimir Tismăneanu, in his review of the book in the journal "Human Rights Review", contend that the Black Book's comparison is both morally and scholarly justifiable:[27]

Two of the Black Book's contributors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, sparked a debate in France when they publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois's statements in the introduction about the scale of Communist terror. They felt that he was being obsessed with arriving at a total of 100 million victims. They instead estimated that Communism has claimed between 65 and 93 million lives.[28] They rejected his equation of Soviet repression with Nazi genocide. Werth said there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and Communism. He told Le Monde, "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union",[29] and "The more you compare communism and nazism, the more the differences are obvious."[30]

Courtois' insistence that the Holocaust was "actively commemorated" thanks to the efforts of the "international Jewish community" and that a "single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide...has prevented an assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world" was perceived by some to be anti-Semitic.[31][32] Courtois' argument that communism was on par with, if not worse than, Nazism, was thought to have catered directly to the revisionist, negationist, and extreme right-wing groups in France and elsewhere.[32]

Scholars hold Courtois' zealotry and efforts to condemn Communism responsible for dangerous historical revisionism. Courtois was accused of blurring the historical focus of Vichy and Nazi crimes. During the trial of convicted war criminal Maurice Papon, Papon's lawyer attempted to introduce the Black Book into evidence. Holocaust historian Annette Wievriorka argued that the Black attempted to substitute the memory of Communism for the memory of Nazi crimes. The Black Book was intended, Wievroka believed, to displace accounts of Nazi atrocities. [33]

References

  1. ^ Ronit Lenṭin, Mike Dennis, Eva Kolinsky (2003). Representing the Shoah for the Twenty-first Century. Berghahn Books. p. 217. ISBN 1571818022.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ^ "Bartošek Karel". www.paseka.cz. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
  3. ^ Henry Rousso (edt), Stalinism and Nazism: History and Memory Compared (2004), ISBN 0803239459, p. xiii
  4. ^ For example : Un livre noir : diplomatie d'avant-guerre d'après les documents des archives russes : novembre 1910, juillet 1914, Paris, Librairie du travail, 1922.
  5. ^ While in the book itself, Nicolas Werth mentions 15.
  6. ^ While in the book itself, Jean-Louis Margolin mentions half this number.
  7. ^ a b c Black book, Introduction, page 15.
  8. ^ Black book, Introduction, page 9.
  9. ^ Le Monde, 14 november 1997
  10. ^ J Arch Getty, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston: Mar 2000.Vol.285, Iss. 3; pg. 113, 4 pgs [1]
  11. ^ Le Monde, 21 september 2000
  12. ^ "un chiffrage des victimes du communisme abusif, non clarifié [...], non justifié, et contredisant formellement les résultats des coauteurs sur l'URSS, l'Asie et l'Europe de l'Est", Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, Le Monde, 14 november 1997.
  13. ^ Richard Joseph Golsan,French Writers and the Politics of Complicity
  14. ^ "Harvard University Press: The Black Book of Communism : Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stéphane Courtois". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
  15. ^ a b [2]
  16. ^ Ponton, G. (1994) The Soviet Era.
  17. ^ a b c "Communisme, les falsifications d’un « livre noir »", Gilles Perrault, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 1997
  18. ^ Amir Weiner, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Winter, 2002), pp. 450-452
  19. ^ Alexander Dallin, Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 4
  20. ^ Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience By Paul Le Blanc, Dennis Brutus
  21. ^ "The Misnamed 'Black Book of Communism'" - World Socialist website.
  22. ^ Counting the Bodies - Noam Chomsky, Spectrezine magazine.
  23. ^ "Exploiting a Tragedy, or Le Rouge en Noir". www.thenation.com. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
  24. ^ J Arch Getty, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston: Mar 2000. Vol.285, Iss. 3; pg. 113, 4 pgs
  25. ^ [3]
  26. ^ Alexander Dallin, Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 4
  27. ^ Vladimir Tismaneanu, Communism and the human condition: Reflections on the Black Book of Communism, Human Rights Review, Vol 2, Nbr 2, January 2001, Springer Netherlands
  28. ^ Le Monde, 14 November 1997
  29. ^ J Arch Getty, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston: Mar 2000.Vol.285, Iss. 3; pg. 113, 4 pgs [4]
  30. ^ Le Monde, 21 September 2000
  31. ^ International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. "Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, Chapter 13" (PDF). Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority). Retrieved 2008-10-14.
  32. ^ a b Omer Bartov, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 2002, pp. 281-302
  33. ^ Richard Joseph Golsan,French Writers and the Politics of Complicity

See also

Further reading

  • 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
  • Anne Applebaum, foreword, Paul Hollander, introduction and editor, From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence And Repression in Communist Studies, Intercollegiate Studies Institute (April 17, 2006), hardcover, 760 pages, ISBN 1-932236-78-3

External links

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