The Black Book of Communism

by Courtois, Stephane

• ISBN13: 9780674076082
• ISBN10: 0674076087
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Already famous throughout Europe, this international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the actual, practical accomplishments of Communism around the world: terror, torture, famine, mass deportations, and massacres. Astonishing in the sheer detail it amasses, the book is the first comprehensive attempt to catalogue and analyze the crimes of Communism over seventy years. "Revolutions, like trees, must be judged by their fruit," Ignazio Silone wrote, and this is the standard the authors apply to the Communist experience--in the China of "the Great Helmsman," Kim Il Sung's Korea, Vietnam under "Uncle Ho" and Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah. The authors, all distinguished scholars based in Europe, document Communist crimes against humanity, but also crimes against national and universal culture, from Stalin's destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow to Ceausescu's leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the widescale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Mao's Red Guards. As the death toll mounts--as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on--the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression. An extraordinary accounting, this book amply documents the unparalleled position and significance of Communism in the hierarchy of violence that is the history of the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

Foreword: The Uses of Atrocity	ix
Martin Malia
Introduction: The Crimes of Communism	1	(32)
Stephane Courtois
Part I A State against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union	33	(236)
Nicolas Werth
Paradoxes and Misunderstandings Surrounding the October Revolution	39	(14)
The Iron Fist of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat	53	(18)
The Red Terror	71	(10)
The Dirty War	81	(27)
From Tambov to the Great Famine	108	(24)
From the Truce to the Great Turning Point	132	(14)
Forced Collectivization and Dekulakization	146	(13)
The Great Famine	159	(10)
Socially Foreign Elements and the Cycles of Repression	169	(15)
The Great Terror (1936--1938)	184	(19)
The Empire of the Camps	203	(13)
The Other Side of Victory	216	(16)
Apogee and Crisis in the Gulag System	232	(10)
The Last Conspiracy	242	(8)
The Exit from Stalinism	250	(19)
Conclusion	261	(8)
Part II Word Revolution, Civil War, and Terror	269	(92)
Stephane Courtois
Jean-Louis Panne
Remi Kauffer
The Comintern in Action	271	(62)
Stephane Courtois
Jean-Louis Panne
The Shadow of the NKVD in Spain	333	(20)
Stephane Courtois
Jean-Louis Panne
Communism and Terrorism	353	(8)
Remi Kauffer
Part III The Other Europe: Victim of Communism	361	(96)
Andrzej Paczkowski
Karel Bartosek
Poland, the ``Enemy Nation''	363	(31)
Andrzej Paczkowski
Central and Southeastern Europe	394	(63)
Karel Bartosek
Part IV Communism in Asia: Between Reeducation and Massacre	457	(188)
Jean-Louis Margolin
Pierre Rigoulot
Introduction	459	(4)
China: A Long March into Night	463	(84)
Jean-Louis Margolin
Crimes, Terror, and Secrecy in North Korea	547	(18)
Pierre Rigoulot
Vietnam and Laos: The Impasse of War Communism	565	(12)
Jean-Louis Margolin
Cambodia: The Country of Disconcerting Crimes	577	(68)
Jean-Louis Margolin
Conclusion	636	(6)
Select Bibliography for Asia	642	(3)
Part V The Third World	645	(114)
Pascal Fontaine
Yves Santamaria
Sylvain Boulouque
Communism in Latin America	647	(36)
Pascal Fontaine
Afrocommunism: Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique	683	(22)
Yves Santamaria
Communism in Afghanistan	705	(54)
Sylvain Boulouque
Conclusion: Why?	727	(32)
Stephane Courtois
Notes	759	(64)
Index	823	(34)
About the Authors	857