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Why We Fought [A Review of The Black Book of Communism]
The National Review ^ | 2000

Posted on 02/28/2003 6:00:42 AM PST by William McKinley

Why We Fought

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, edited by Stephane Courtois, translated by Mark Kramer and Jonathan Murphy (Harvard, 858 pp., $37.50)

LAST February, I met with former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet at the house outside London where he is being held by British authorities. As we discussed the efforts of a Spanish judge to extradite him to stand trial in Spain, Pinochet suddenly got up and disappeared into his study. He returned a few moments later carrying a hefty book. Handing it to me, he said: "This is what I was fighting against. This is what we prevented from happening to our country. "

It read: El Libro Negro del Comunismo-"The Black Book of Communism."

The Black Book is a groundbreaking effort by a group of French scholars to document the human costs of Communism in the 20th century. Its publication caused a sensation in France when it was first released in 1997, but Americans were not able to see for themselves what the furor was all about until October 1999, when Harvard University Press finally released an English translation.

It was worth the wait. Taking advantage of many newly available archives in former Communist states, the authors (many of them former Communists themselves) have meticulously recorded the crimes, terror, and repression inflicted by Communist regimes across the world. It is a powerful work.

The death toll they present is simply staggering. The USSR: nearly 20 million dead, China: 65 million; Vietnam: 1 million; North Korea: 2 million; Cambodia: 2 million; Eastern Europe: I million; Latin America: 150,000; Africa: 1.7 million- Afghanistan: 1.5 million. Stephane Courtois and his colleagues conclude that between 85 and 100 million human beings were killed this century by Communist regimes.

Yet despite all the death and destruction left in its wake, Communism is still viewed by many intellectuals as a noble cause, the murder committed in its name simply an aberration. On the book's release in France, Communist Party chief Robert Hue declared that Communism was "a system dedicated to human liberation which was subsequently perverted." The Black Book's authors set out to prove that this is a lie. They show in painstaking detail-case by case, country by country, terror by terror-that Communism was from the very beginning a criminal enterprise. As historian Martin Malia puts it in his foreword, "there never was a benign, initial phase of Communism before some mythical 'wrong turn' threw it off track."

In his chapter, "A State Against Its People," Nicolas Werth debunks the myth that Lenin's revolution was a humane experiment that was later corrupted by Stalin. The terror, he shows, began in the very first days of the Bolshevik revolution. Indeed, Werth establishes that in the first four months of their rule, the Bolsheviks executed more of their political opponents than had the czars in the entire previous century.

Here is Lenin, in a telegram sent on August 9, 1918, ordering the roundup of all "kulaks, priests, White Guards and other doubtful elements in a concentration camp" (a term coined by the Bolsheviks). Here he is again, ordering the Cheka (the predecessor of the KGB) to summarily execute "kulaks," who were small landholders: "You must make an example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers.... Yours, Lenin." (The telegram concludes with an eerie "PS. Find tougher people.") And here he is replying to his Commissar of justice, Isaac Steinberg, who, complaining that the Cheka is carrying out summary executions, asks, "What is the point of a People's Commissariat for Justice? ... It would be more honest to have a People's Commissariat for Social Extermination." Lenin responds: "Excellent idea! That's exactly how I see it. Unfortunately it wouldn't do to call it that."'

Lenin's terror was, of course, followed by Stalin's, and from there the cancer metastasizes. Its spread is documented in subsequent chapters: Andrzej Paczkowski and Karel Bartosek document the brutal subjugation of Central and Southern Europe; Jean-Louis Margolin and Pierre Rigoulot document its spread through China and Asia (from Mao Tse-tung's "Great Leap Forward"the worst man,made famine in history-- to Pol Pot's murderous aping of Mao's policies in Cambodia); Pascal Fontaine, Yves Santamaria, and Sylvain Boulouque document Communism's bloody rampage through the Third World, in Latin America, Africa, and Afghanistan. The whole montage, Courtois explains, shows that "each national Communism has been linked by an umbilical cord to the Soviet womb."

Yet despite the deaths of nearly 100 million people at the hands of this Communist system, Malia notes that "virtually none of the responsible officials has been put on trial or punished." The same week that Pinochet was arrested in London, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was in Portugal clinking glasses with heads of state at the IberoAmerican summit. His crimes, too, are well documented in The Black Book: "From 1959 through the late 1990s more than 100,000 Cubans experienced life in one of [Castro's] camps [or] prisons ... [and b]etween 15,000 and 17,000 people were shot." Yet Pinochet (who relinquished power, and left Chile a prosperous, thriving, free-market democracy) is held prisoner, while Castro is free, feted by world leaders.

[IMAGE PHOTOGRAPH] Captioned as: The "museum of genocide" in Cambodia, displaying the remains of the victims of the Khmer Rouge

The furor the book caused on its release in France is recounted in Malia's excellent introduction to the English edition. Few of the book's critics questioned the facts presented in this scrupulous study. Rather, the controversy centered on several provocative conclusions in Courtois's introduction, where he addresses not only the guilt of Communism's butchers but the "complicity" of Western intellectuals who hailed Lenin, Stalin, Mao, "Uncle Ho," and Fidel Castro as heroes, ignored their crimes, and never repented or repudiated their former allegiances. "Many will say that they 'didn't know,"' Courtois writes. "But quite often this ignorance was merely the result of ideologically motivated self-deception. . . . And although many of these apologists have cast aside their gods of yesterday, they have done so quietly and discreetly."

These charges struck a nerve in France, where Socialist premier Lionel jospin had established a coalition government with France's Communist Party and had three Communist ministers in his cabinet. His conservative opponents read excerpts from The Black Book in the French parliament, forcing jospin to publicly defend his alliance with the Communists. The Black Book quickly shot to the bestseller lists, selling 70,1000 copies in just three weeks.

Controversy also exploded over the inevitable comparison to Nazi Germany, and Courtois's complaint that while Communism killed nearly 100 millionfour times the number killed by Hitler"the status of ex-Communist carries with it no stigma... [whereas] past contact with Nazism... no matter how marginal or remote, confers an indelible stain." Critics argued that Nazism is clearly a greater evil because while Communism employed extermination for political ends, Nazism viewed extermination as an end in itself But as Martin Malia notes, this argument can also be turned on its head: "Eastern European dissidents have argued that mass murder in the name of a noble idea is more perverse than it is in the name of a base one." There is something discomforting about drawing such distinctions between horrors, and some commentators (notably historian Alain Besan@on) suggested a simpler conclusion: that murder is murder, that the Jew and the kulak are equally dead. But this is precisely Courtois's complaint: While the Jew and the kulak are equally dead, today an adherent to the ideology that killed the Jew is a pariah, while adherents to the ideology that killed the kulak are not.

Reading Courtois's essay, it is hard to see what was so offensive. His is not an effort to demonstrate that Communism was more evil than Nazism. It is a simple plea that both be viewed as evils. But Communism is not in fact viewed as an evil comparable to Nazism. Just a few years ago, the New York Times published a long, whimsical story about the CPUSA's 75th-anniversary celebration (octogenarian party chief Gus Hall was described as "hale and hearty"). Can one imagine the Times running a similar story about a meeting of American Nazis?

Or witness the furor that erupted earlier this year, when director Elia Kazan was given an Oscar for lifetime achievement, because Kazan had admitted before a congressional committee that he had been a Communist and named his- former comrades.- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the liberal historian, asked whether similar outrage would have burst forth had Kazan been a repentant Nazi who had denounced his former comrades. To the contrary-he would have been hailed as a hero.

Why the double standard? Part of the reason, The Black Book suggests, lies in the fact that while Nazism was completely vanquished in World War 11-its crimes exposed, its leaders tried and condemned-Communism was never clearly and publicly repudiated in the eyes of the world. After all, the Communists were our allies in the war against the Nazis; Soviet judges even participated in the trials at Nuremberg.

Nearly as shocking as the deaths recorded in The Black Book is the fact that the work is the first effort to document the full extent of Communism's crimes. "Why has it been necessary to wait until the end of the 20th century for this subject to show up on the academic radar screen?" Courtois asks. Why are "names like Himmler and Eichmann . . . recognized around the world as bywords for 20th-century barbarism, [while] the names of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Ezhov languish in obscurity"?

This, the authors rightly conclude, is a scandal. Courtois and his colleagues have taken a first, bold step to end this ignorance. But they have done so without illusions. Martin Malia predicts a "very Long March indeed before Communism is accorded its fair share of absolute evil." Perhaps he is right. But at least now, when our children one day ask what the Cold War was about, we can hand them this book.


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bookreview; communism
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To: madfly
***Yet despite the deaths of nearly 100 million people at the hands of this Communist system, Malia notes that "virtually none of the responsible officials has been put on trial or punished." The same week that Pinochet was arrested in London, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was in Portugal clinking glasses with heads of state at the IberoAmerican summit. His crimes, too, are well documented in The Black Book: "From 1959 through the late 1990s more than 100,000 Cubans experienced life in one of [Castro's] camps [or] prisons ... [and b]etween 15,000 and 17,000 people were shot." Yet Pinochet (who relinquished power, and left Chile a prosperous, thriving, free-market democracy) is held prisoner, while Castro is free, feted by world leaders. ***

Against All Hope

21 posted on 02/28/2003 11:34:19 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Revolting cat!
"How about "Koba the Dread"?!"

you say "Koba", i say "korba"..or "loba"- what's a consonant between freepers? *grin*

thanx for the catch.

22 posted on 02/28/2003 11:42:18 AM PST by fourdeuce82d
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To: Semaphore Heathcliffe
"Stunning to think this was actually happening..."

Even more stunning to realize it may happen again, much closer to home.
23 posted on 02/28/2003 12:18:57 PM PST by headsonpikes
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
This is an important book. I will take a look at it to remind me of some things known but perhaps forgotten, as well as for other new information for my commie "friends".
24 posted on 02/28/2003 12:30:00 PM PST by AFPhys
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To: headsonpikes
absolutely. when reading the book, one cannot help but see some modern and local analogs. Another book that will make shake some blinders off is They Thought They Were Free, which you obviously might have read. Milton Mayer's interviews with former Nazi party members post-WWII. If I can find it, I'll post an FR thread from way back dealing with that book.
25 posted on 02/28/2003 12:38:55 PM PST by Semaphore Heathcliffe
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To: headsonpikes
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3933158a65ae.htm
26 posted on 02/28/2003 12:40:55 PM PST by Semaphore Heathcliffe
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To: Carry_Okie
I would say that the Communists CAUSED Hitler.

Look at the situation from the viewpoint of the German middle-class in 1930: The Russian Revolution had occurred in 1918, twelve years before. There were ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, and word was getting back about the purges, exile, and murder of the old middle-classes there. Add to that a rising, militant Communist movement in Germany, and the German middle-class would back ANYBODY who demonstrated a willingness to wade into the streets against the Communist militants and bust some Red heads.

27 posted on 02/28/2003 12:59:22 PM PST by SauronOfMordor (Heavily armed, easily bored, and off my medication)
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To: Carry_Okie

>>>The Roosevelt Administration was riddled with Communists as is the American media and the academic left to this day.<<<

You Can Trust The Communists (to be Communists) download

AND A BUMP TO ALL YOUR DUPLICATES!

28 posted on 02/28/2003 1:11:02 PM PST by Remedy
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To: SauronOfMordor
I would say that the Communists CAUSED Hitler.

Agreed, and some say that it was planned.

Not only did the Germans see what was happening in the Soviet Union, consider the behavior of the Spartacus Party in Berlin. Curiously, Spartacus was the code name for Adam Weishapt.

29 posted on 02/28/2003 1:14:54 PM PST by Carry_Okie (Because there are people in power who are truly evil.)
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To: SauronOfMordor
Weishaupt.

Sheesh.
30 posted on 02/28/2003 1:15:28 PM PST by Carry_Okie (Because there are people in power who are truly evil.)
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To: madfly
The Schwarz Report Bookshelf
31 posted on 02/28/2003 1:18:24 PM PST by Remedy
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To: Semaphore Heathcliffe
Your link in #26 a most subversive little thread, I must say!

All socialisms are National Socialisms. That's why the 'people' love them, for a while.
32 posted on 02/28/2003 1:33:34 PM PST by headsonpikes
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To: AFPhys
Bump!
33 posted on 02/28/2003 2:53:43 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: William McKinley
"The Black Book is a groundbreaking effort by a group of French scholars to document the human costs of Communism in the 20th century."

There is nothing "groundbreaking" about this work, other than the fact that it was done by "leftist" scholars. Rupert Rummel has been writing about "death by government", which he calls "democide", for years. His work documents the excessive civilian deaths caused by Communism and compares it to other forms of tyranny. Communism/socialism turns out to be far worse even than war at killing large numbers of people. Maybe that is why the "greens" are so fond of it!!

34 posted on 02/28/2003 3:42:51 PM PST by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel)
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To: madfly
Excellent article, Mad. Thanks so much for the ping.
35 posted on 02/28/2003 10:52:11 PM PST by Victoria Delsoul
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To: Carry_Okie

Of the two finds, this search is the closest to what you told me, but I don’t see the words regarding the working class.


36 posted on 06/20/2011 8:48:08 PM PDT by Avoiding_Sulla (How humanitarian are "leaders" who back Malthusian, Utilitarian & Green nutcases?)
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To: Avoiding_Sulla
Of the two finds, this search is the closest to what you told me, but I don’t see the words regarding the working class.

Who the hell do you think the anarchists in Spain were?

37 posted on 06/20/2011 10:14:28 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (GunWalker: Arming "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as well funded")
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To: Carry_Okie
I have no idea, that's why I asked. You're telling me that all the working class in Spain were anarchists?

How the hell can anyone KNOW that? Even were you to provide a citation, it would be a stated opinion. He'd have a hard time proving it were universal.

At any rate, recall that what I'm looking for is more evidence that Marxists have it in for all who work to gain a measure of security for themselves and families. They targetting the "bourgeoisie" was their way of disguising an attack on the middle class. You believe this quote also shows they had it in for the laboring class. Is there an easy way to make it plain to readers how this applies? I do not see it.

Bottom line is that the CONSISTENTLY bloody history of Marxist regimes proves that Marxists are working for the power elites who wish to enslave all but themselves. As Orwell put it in his last work "A boot stomping on a human face -- forever."

Funny thing, but just before I found your reply this morning, I read the following off-topic projection by a troll on an anti-abortion thread at Townhall.com. Everything that Marxists do for the power elite the troll projects upon members of the Right.

You must be one of those few elite who make over 250,000 dollars a year. Naturally, you would repeat the regurgitated garbage that comes out of the right-wing machine.

But if you are not that wealthy, like the millions of conservative supporters of the very rich, then you are doubly a fool, because you support a political machine that works every day against your financial well being. That of course, is your choice. You wouldn't be the first or the last fool to think that, by supporting the rich, you somehow will gain a chance to rise to their level.

Progressives and liberals are at least equally patriotic, hardworking, family loving Americans as anyone who proclaims conservative values. The vast majority of progressives and conservatives in this country have similar, if not the same values and aspirations. You are welcome to come to my neighborhood in Manhattan and see for yourself how hard working we are, how we are anything but victims and how we DO NOT kill anyone for convenience. We don't even have the guns that are so abundant in your neighborhood, and make it so easy to kill anyone. You talk about high cerebral stuff, as if knowledge and competence are something to be ashamed of.

Take a good look at the people you consider as leaders or good examples or politicians. People like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, and ask yourself, who they really care for, and how their actions would benefit you or your family. I am talking about positive actions, and not the usual attacks against Obama, or liberals or "welfare queens" or minorities. Don't worry. By using your brain a bit more, you do not run the danger of becoming a "high level cerebral" elite.

Ironically, as you parse this trollage, the troll demonstrates what I'm looking for. He stokes class envy divisions across the board. In it he is the hero of the downtrodden rather than what we aim to do which is allow each man to try to achieve independence of monsters such as he intentionally or unwittingly would enable.
38 posted on 06/21/2011 8:25:50 AM PDT by Avoiding_Sulla (How humanitarian are "leaders" who back Malthusian, Utilitarian & Green nutcases?)
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To: Carry_Okie

I accidentally left off the attribution of that troll, maybe subliminally because I felt his handle was a disgusting mockery. Let me correct my oversight now: he goes by Melech Ha Olam.


39 posted on 06/21/2011 8:35:00 AM PDT by Avoiding_Sulla (How humanitarian are "leaders" who back Malthusian, Utilitarian & Green nutcases?)
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Bumping a most excellent older thread...


40 posted on 06/21/2011 8:55:17 AM PDT by Vigilantcitizen (I got a fever and the only prescription is more watermelon trickworm, better known as bass crack.)
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