Mass killings under communist regimes

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. 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.

Terminology

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

The term "politicide" is often used to describe the killing of political or economic groups that would otherwise be covered by the Genocide Convention. R. J. Rummel coined the most widely-used democide, which includes genocide, politicide, and mass murder. Jacques Semelin prefers "crime against humanity" when speaking of the violence perpetrated by communist regimes. Michael Mann has proposed the term "classicide" to mean the "intended mass killing of entire social classes."

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.

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.

Historical examples

Soviet Union

Red Terror

Main article: Red Terror

During the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks unleashed the Red Terror to suppress opposition, which culminated in the summary execution of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people" by the political police, the Cheka. Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation. One of the largest massacres of the civil war 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.

Large numbers of people were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion, the Tambov Rebellion and the August Uprising. Vladimir Lenin established the Gulag about this time and initiated decossackization.

The Bolshevik policy of decossackization was the first example of Soviet leaders deciding to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory." 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." In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground. Historians estimate that, during 1919 and 1920, between 300,000 and 500,000 Cossacks were killed or deported out of a population of around three million.

National operations of the NKVD

Main article: 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. A total of 350,000 were arrested and 247,157 were executed. 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.'

Persecution of Russian Orthodox clergy

Main article: Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

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’)." Citing church documents, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev has estimated that over 100,000 priests, monks and nuns were executed during this time.

In 1918, during the Red Terror, the Bolsheviks executed nearly 3,000 Orthodox clergymen of all ranks. Another 8,000 were killed during the conflict over church valuables in 1922. 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."

Yezhovshchina

Main article: Great purge

Following the solidification of Stalin's position as leader of the Soviet Union, there was an escalation in detentions and executions of various people, climaxing in 1937–38 (a period known as the "Yezhovshchina"), and continuing until Stalin's death in 1953. It has been estimated that between 950 thousand and 1.2 million were killed during the Yezhovshchina. Around 700,000 of these were executed by a gunshot to the back of the head, others perished in the Gulag due to starvation, disease, exposure and overwork. Some prisoners were gassed to death in batches in the back of a specially adapted airtight van disguised as a bread truck. 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.

Robert Conquest, in his 1968 book The Great Terror stated that the executions of former Communist leaders was a minor detail of the purges, which caused 20 million deaths including man-made famines. For the 40th anniversary edition of the book, he reduced his estimate to 13–15 million.

Great Purge in Mongolia

Main article: Stalinist repressions 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 in which some 22,000 and 35,000 people were executed. Around 18,000 victims were Buddhist lamas.

People's Republic of China

In China, many historians and biographers, such as Jonathan Fenby, Philip Short, R.J. Rummel, Jung Chang, among others, allege that Mao Zedong's policies and political purges, such as the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and land reform, brought about the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Land reform and the suppression of counterrevolutionaries

Main article: Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries

The first large scale killings took place during land reform and the counterrevolutionary campaign. During land reform, 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. The suppression of counterrevolutionaries targeted mainly former Kuomintang officials and intellectuals suspected of disloyalty. 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."

The Great Leap Forward

Main article: 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. 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. 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.

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. In spite of this, China was a net grain exporter from 1958-60. This left little or none for the local populace. Government officials were indifferent to the people dying around them, as their top priority was the delivery of grain. 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. Mao refused to open the granaries for the starving peasants because he believed they were lying and that rightists and kulaks were hoarding grain. 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.

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. Exports to the Soviet Union increased by 50% during the famine years.

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, and the the worst of the famine was steered towards the regime's enemies. 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.

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. 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.

Professors and scholars of the Great Chinese Famine, who do not use the word 'genocide' to describe it but rather more neutral terms, such as "abnormal deaths", have estimated that they number between 17 million to 50 million. Some western analysts such as Patricia Buckley Ebrey estimate that about 20–40 million people had died of starvation caused by bad government policy and natural disasters. J. Banister estimates this number is about 23 million. Li Chengrui, a former minister of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, estimated 22 million (1998). His estimation was based on Ansley J. Coale and Jiang Zhenghua's estimation of 17 million. Cao Shuji estimated 32.5 million.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Main article: Cultural Revolution

It is estimated by historian and China expert Roderick MacFarquhar that around a million people were killed in the violence of the Cultural Revolution. Mao's Red Guards were given carte blanche to abuse and kill the revolution's enemies. For example, in August 1966, over 100 teachers were murdered by their students in western Beijing alone. 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.

Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea)

See also: Khmer Rouge

Skulls of victims of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

Sociologist Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era".

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 (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).

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. 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." 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." 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.

In 1997 the Cambodian Government asked the United Nations assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal. The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007. 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.

Legal sanctions and accusations of "genocide"

Katyn 1943 exhumation. Photo by International Red Cross delegation.

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, 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; 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.

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. As of March 2008, the Ukraine and between eleven and nineteen other governments. The Russia 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

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. 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."

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. 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.

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." They are not inevitable but are political decisions.

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

A natural consequence

Benjamin Valentino writes that mass killings strategies are chosen by Communists to economically dispossess large numbers of people.^(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. 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. 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."^(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".. Literary historian George Watson argued in The Lost Literature of Socialism 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." 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." 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."^(p558) Grant also claims Watson's concept of 'socialism' is "at best nebulous...and at worst, anything at odds with his own classical liberalism."^(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.^(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.^(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.^(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.^{(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.^(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,”"^(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."^{(p x)} The editor, Stéphane Courtois' object of analysis is the soviet-style system of states.^(p727) Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality, "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government,"^(p4) and proceeds with a claim that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.^(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."^(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,^{(xvii–xviii)}, culminating in the judgement that Communism or "an absolute end to inequality" must be "accorded its fair share of pure evil."^(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".^(p29) Courtois establishes a corrupted cradle theory: that bolshevism perverted the communist movement.⁽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." ^(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.^(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." ⁽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.⁽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." ⁽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

• 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
• Soviet war crimes
• Victims of Communism Memorial
• Anti-communist mass killings

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. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Courtois, Stephane (1999). [[The Black Book of Communism]]: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. p. 858. ISBN 0-674-07608-7. {{cite book}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Deker, Nikolai (1958). Genocide in the USSR: studies in group destruction. Scarecrow Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Pipes, Richard (2003). Communism: A History. Modern Library Chronicles. p. 175. ISBN 9780812968644. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Rummel, Rudolph (1997). Death by government. Transaction Publishers. p. 496. ISBN 1-56000-927-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) at WWW.Hawaii.edu
• Sarup, Kamala (September 5, 2005). "Communist Genocide In Cambodia" (PDF). Genocide Watch. Retrieved September 30, 2009. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Totten, Samuel (2008). Dictionary of genocide, Volume 1. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 534. ISBN 0313346429, 9780313346422. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= 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. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= 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. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= 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

• Global Museum on Communism