Read more
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 II Sungs 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 Stalins destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow to Ceausescus leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the wide-scale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Maos 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.
List of contents
* Foreword: The Uses of Atrocity Martin Malia * Introduction: The Crimes of Communism Stephane Courtois I. A State against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union Nicolas Werth * Paradoxes and Misunderstandings Surrounding the October Revolution * The Iron Fist of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat * The Red Terror * The Dirty War * From Tambov to the Great Famine * From the Truce to the Great Turning Point * Forced Collectivization and Dekulakization * The Great Famine * Socially Foreign Elements and the Cycles of Repression * The Great Terror (1936 -1938) * The Empire of the Camps * The Other Side of Victory * Apogee and Crisis in the Gulag System * The Last Conspiracy * The Exit from Stalinism Conclusion II. Word Revolution, Civil War, and Terror Stephane Courtois, Jean-Louis Panne, and Remi Kauffer * The Comintern in Action Stephane Courtois and Jean-Louis Panne * The Shadow of the NKVD in Spain Stephane Courtois and Jean-Louis Panne * Communism and Terrorism Remi Kauffer III. The Other Europe: Victim of Communism Andrzej Paczkowski and Karel Bartoek * Poland, the "Enemy Nation" Andrzej Paczkowski * Central and Southeastern Europe Karel Bartoek IV. Communism in Asia: Between Reeducation and Massacre Jean-Louis Margolin and Pierre Rigoulot Introduction * China: A Long March into Night Jean-Louis Margolin * Crimes, Terror, and Secrecy in North Korea Pierre Rigoulot * Vietnam and Laos: The Impasse of War Communism Jean-Louis Margolin * Cambodia: The Country of Disconcerting Crimes Jean-Louis Margolin Conclusion Select Bibliography for Asia V. The Third World Pascal Fontaine, Yves Santamaria, and Sylvain Boulouque * Communism in Latin America Pascal Fontaine * Afrocommunism: Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique Yves Santamaria * Communism in Afghanistan Sylvain Boulouque Conclusion: Why? Stephane Courtois * Notes * Index * About the Authors
About the author
Stéphane Courtois ist Directeur de recherche (CNRS) am "Groupe d'Etude et d'Observation de la Democratie" der Universität Paris X in Nanterre.
Nicolas Werth ist Dozent für Geschichte und forscht am französischen Institut für Zeitgeschichte CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) mit dem Schwerpunkt Geschichte der UdSSR. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen.
Summary
This international bestseller plumbs archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the actual, practical accomplishments of Communism around the world: terror, torture, famine, mass deportations, and massacres. The authors show how and why, wherever the ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression.
