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Mass killings under communist regimes

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Mass killings occurred under Communist regimes including the Soviet Union under Stalin, the People's Republic of China under Mao, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The word "genocide" has been applied, but the appropriateness of this is debated, and not confirmed by the chief genocide convention which the Soviet Union was a party to. [1][2] One common factor posited in Communist mass killings is the revolutionary desire by radical communist regimes to bring about the rapid and total transformation of society resulting in the sudden and nearly complete material and political dispossession of millions of people. [3]

Terminology

Benjamin Valentino claims that there is "No generally accepted terminology exists to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants."[citation needed] Under the Genocide Convention, the term "genocide" does not in particular apply to the mass killing of political and economic groups.[citation needed]

The term "politicide" is often 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 most widely-used democide, which includes genocide, politicide, and mass murder.[citation needed] Jacques Semelin prefers "crime against humanity" when speaking of the violence perpetrated by communist regimes.[5] Michael Mann has proposed the term "classicide" to mean the "intended mass killing of entire social classes."[6]

Valentino uses the term "mass killing," which he defines as "the intentional killing of a significant number of the members of any group of noncombatants (as the group and its membership are defined by the perpetrator)," in his book "Final Solutions: The Causes of Mass Killings and Genocides." In a chapter called "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China and Cambodia", Valentino focuses on these three perpetrators and other communist states.[7]

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.[8]

Causes

Specific to the situation

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."[9] They are not inevitable but are political decisions.[10]

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."[11] Historian Robert Gellately concurs, saying: "To put it another way, Stalin initiated very little that Lenin had not already introduced or previewed."[12]

A natural consequence

Benjamin Valentino writes that mass killings strategies are chosen by Communists to economically dispossess large numbers of people.[7](pp34–37) He states that a common structure unites Soviet, Chinese and Cambodian mass killings: the defence of a utopian and shared version of radical communism.[13] 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.[14] 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."[7](p93)

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".[15]. Literary historian George Watson argued in The Lost Literature of Socialism[16] 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."[16] 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."[17] 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."[18](p558) Grant also claims Watson's concept of 'socialism' is "at best nebulous...and at worst, anything at odds with his own classical liberalism."[18](p559)

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.[19](p557) 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.[19](p555-6) 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.[19](p554-556) 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.[19](p551, 553-6) 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.[19](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,”"[19](p552) and made broad use of his term in the political service of the USA's anti-communist position in the 1950s concludes Weiss-Wendt. However, 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 collected set of academic essays on the theme of repression in Communist controlled states. It claims to detail "Leninism's 'crimes, terror, and repression' from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989."[20](p x) The editor, Stéphane Courtois' object of analysis is the soviet-style system of states.[21](p727) Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality, "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government,"[20](p4) and proceeds with a claim that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.[20](p2) However, Courtois admits 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."[20](p10) This is also the position of Malia who claims in the Foreword that Communist criminality caused mass killings is the shared analytical tendency of the collection,[22](xvii–xviii), culminating in the judgement that Communism or "an absolute end to inequality" must be "accorded its fair share of pure evil."[22](xx) Accepting that this practice of history is non-standard, Courtois justifies his capacity to judge by recourse to an ideology rooted in Catholic individualism which is capable of exceeding its own "certain hypocracy".[20](p29) Courtois establishes a corrupted cradle theory: that bolshevism perverted the communist movement.[21](727) He proceeds to elucidate two general reasons for barbarity: racialist Russian exceptionalism and the War Experience; neither, as he observes, "explain the Bolsheviks' propensity for extreme violence." [21](727–735). Courtois retreats from analysis and conducts a moralism of Lenin claiming simply that power was Lenin's aim and his ideology was fundamentally voluntarist, and universally totalising both intellectually and in social conflict.[21](727–741) Ultimately, Courtois' conclusion falls into the error he accuses Trotsky and Lenin of, "a strong tendency to develop general conclusions based on the Russian experience, which in any case was often exaggerated in [Trotsky's] interpretations." [21](742) Courtois treatment of East Asian communism is cursory, and follows his corrupted cradle thesis, drawing no distinction between Vietnamese re-education structures and Kampuchean mass killings, and does not address other communist societies or parties.[21](748) Courtois acknowledges but dismisses this deficiency in his theory, "a linkage can always be traced to the pattern elaborated in Moscow in November 1917." [21](754) The Black Book of Communism's correctness has been disputed based on claims of serious methodological, interpretive, narrative and (to some commentators) ideological flaws.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Political categories are excluded from the definition contained in the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention.
  2. ^ Weitz, pp.8-9
  3. ^ Valentino p. 93
  4. ^ Gurr, Barbara (1988). "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945". International Studies Quarterly. 32: 359-371. {{cite journal}}: |first2= missing |last2= (help)
  5. ^ Semelin, Jacques (2009). "Destroying to Eradicate". Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide. Columbia University Press. p. 344. ISBN 0231142838, 9780231142830. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  6. ^ 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)
  7. ^ a b c Valentino, Benjamin (2000) 'Final solutions: The causes of mass killing and genocide', Security Studies, 9:3, 1 — 59 DOI: 10.1080/09636410008429405
  8. ^ 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)
  9. ^ Weitz, 251-252.
  10. ^ Weitz, 251-252.
  11. ^ Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0300087608 page 20
  12. ^ 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
  13. ^ 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.
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ Gray, John (1990). "Totalitarianism, civil society and reform". In Ellen Frankel Paul (ed.). Totalitarianism at the crossroads. Transaction Publisher. p. 116ISBN=9780887388507.
  16. ^ a b Watson, George (1998). The Lost Literature of Socialism. Lutterworth press. ISBN 9780718829865.
  17. ^ Watson, George, The Lost Literature of Socialism, page 80. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1998. ISBN 0718829867, 9780718829865, 112 pages
  18. ^ 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)
  19. ^ 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
  20. ^ a b c d e Stéphane Courtois, "Introduction: The Crimes of Communism" In Eds. Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer, The black book of communism: crimes, terror, repression ([No named location:] Harvard University Press 1999): 1–32. ISBN0674076087.
  21. ^ a b c d e f g 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.
  22. ^ a b Martin Malia, "Foreword: Uses of Attrocity" In Eds. Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer, The black book of communism: crimes, terror, repression ([No named location:] Harvard University Press 1999): 1–32. ISBN0674076087

References and further reading

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