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The Black Book of Communism

Crimes, Terror, Repression

Stéphane Courtois

Cover of The Black Book of Communism - Crimes, Terror, RepressionAlready 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
Martin Malia

Introduction: The Crimes of Communism
Stéphane Courtois

ix


p. 1
Part IA State against Its people: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union
Nicolas Werth
p. 33
1

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
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
p. 39

p. 53
p. 71
p. 81
p. 108
p. 132
p. 146
p. 159
p. 169
p. 184
p. 203
p. 216
p. 232
p. 242
p. 250
p. 261

Part II

World Revolution, Civill War, and Terror

p. 269
16


17


18

The Comintern in Action
Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Panné

The Shadow of the NKVD in Spain
Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Panné

Communism and Terrorism
Rémi Kauffer

p. 271


p. 333


p. 353

Part IIIThe Other Europe: Victim of Communismp. 361
19


20

Poland, the “Enemy Nation”
Andrzej Paczkowski

Central and Southeastern Europe
Karel Bartosek

p. 363


p. 394

Part IVCommunism in Asia: Between Reeducation and Massacrep. 457

21


22


23


24

Introduction

China: A Long March into the 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

p. 459

p. 463


p. 547


p. 565


p. 577


p. 636
p. 642

Part VThe Third Worldp. 645
25


26


27

Communism in Latin America
Pascal Fontaine

Afrocommunism: Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique
Yves Santamaria

Communism in Afghanistan
Sylvain Boulouque

p. 647


p. 683


p. 704

Conclusion: Why?
Stéphane Courtois
p. 727
Notes
Index
About the Authors
p. 759
p. 823
p. 857

$29.70

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