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The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
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Average Rating:  out of 108 Reviews
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Price: $45.00
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Sale: $24.94
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Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780674076082
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Stéphane Courtois::Nicolas Werth::Jean-Louis Panné::Andrzej Paczkowski::Karel Bartosek::Jean-Louis Margolin::Stephane Courtois::Jean-Louis Panne
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Publisher: Harvard University Press
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Dewey Decimal Number: 320.532
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Publication Date: 1999-10-15
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Reading Level: 912
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Description: When it was first published in France in 1997, Le livre noir du Communisme touched off a storm of controversy that continues to rage today. Even some of his contributors shied away from chief editor Stéphane Courtois's conclusion that Communism, in all its many forms, was morally no better than Nazism; the two totalitarian systems, Courtois argued, were far better at killing than at governing, as the world learned to its sorrow. Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims. This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident, but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them. Courtois and his contributors document Communism's crimes in numbing detail, moving from country to country, revolution to revolution. The figures they offer will likely provoke argument, if not among cliometricians then among the ideologically inclined. So, too, will Courtois's suggestion that those who hold Lenin, Trotsky, and Ho Chi Minh in anything other than contempt are dupes, witting or not, of a murderous school of thought--one that, while in retreat around the world, still has many adherents. A thought-provoking work of history and social criticism, The Black Book of Communism fully merits the broadest possible readership and discussion. --Gregory McNamee
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: I give it 4 stars, I wished I could give it 5 |
Date: 2008-11-17 |
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Details: This is the first review I write for Amazon. Coming from an Ex-Communist country (Romania) I ordered the book with a great deal of anticipation. My review "applies" only to Parts I, II and III, Courtois' introduction and final arguments in the book. I don't know that much about Communism outside Europe so I'll just stick to these parts.
1. On the introduction and the final article by Courtois: it is shallow, silly and offending/indecent (for the comparison with the Holocaust and more). Because: 1. These were not scholarly pieces, looked more like settling scores 2. It WAS NOT the proper introduction/ending to such a book, especially since it is the first big effort to finally (!!!) address the overall human suffering toll of Communism. (Dead)Persecuted people do/did not wish to become the puppets in some Western Saga of ideological fights. Their blood and tears should not be used so people can mostly point fingers at "useful-idiotic Leftists" or "just-as-bad-blood-sucking capitalists". Please read this book from a "humanistic" point of view first: all these deaths (may they be 50-100 millions) and suffering deserve some respect. There will be plenty time for comparing and analyzing, preferably in a scholarly journal, peer-reviewed or at least in a separate book. For a book claiming to be the first to add-up Communist death victims, could they not abstain from making a partisan point from it?
2.On the whole the book is too quantitative for my taste. I felt the Part on Eastern Europe too short, general and not having the right priorities in mind. I guess 1 million deaths here didn't seem like much, but Communism was much more than that..
3. The book wants to concentrate on killed/persecuted groups. But the diversity of people persecuted/killed in Communism is missing/underplayed. What is shown: religious people; "bourgeois" enemies; workers; peasants. WHAT IS MISSING or is insufficiently addressed: 1. Jews. Romanian Jews were sold like furniture to Israel. The anti-Semites were happy there were no more Jews after that. 250.000 - 300.000 Romanian Jews sold abroad by a communist state who persecuted them if they stayed (and they had just survived both Romanian and German fascists). For a book so hooked on big numbers a serious discussion on this episode was fitted ( for more details: [...]); 2. Romanians of German origins, sold in a more limited but similar fashion; 3. gays (outlawed in Romania, horribly beaten, killed (?) and abused by the police); 4. disabled people and children (placed in "special hospitals" to die of hunger and neglect. Again some serious number-crunching would have fit here);5. Gypsies. More than one state had racist policies (like sterilizing Roma women); 5. Women dead and sick because of the 1966 "Decree 770" banning abortion in Romania. Thousands of women estimated dead, the horror of this law especially in the 80's for an impoverished nation (not by incompetence but by criminal management) with no contraception and "pregnancy-tests" using frogs (yes, frogs) . And did the authors even bother to add these dead women up even in a modest estimate to their numbers? Sure, these are not "significant" numbers in the perspective of 100 millions, but still...
4 These are mostly Romanian but not unique examples. Frankly some of these social groups were barely/if at all addressed in the book: so were their deaths counted or not?
I am no expert in numbers. This is why I don't know if this or that particular event led to 10 million or 15 million dead. But, again, I am seriously puzzled by some deaths I'm not sure WERE counted: like some people killed in police basements in Romania or women dead from the law banning abortion. Death certificates were such "relative" things back then so while gay people (or any other "deviants") may have been killed by the police their official death records could state anything like "hit by bicycle".. People in Eastern Europe didn't die only from executions and labor camps... this particular section I felt was mishandled.
5. While a "book of numbers" I am glad they took some space to recount some of the more "sinister" few details, those stories we don't really believe, stories we are tempted not to believe. The ones I was familiar with, like the Pitesti experiment were all true.
6. The authors went for "NUMBERS" they say. But if you want numbers, stick to numbers. At times in Part I and II on Russia (USSR) the authors went to great lengths to show different communist factions at work and relations between them, but this didn't much help the point of the book. It did show the book was meant for publication in France
7. Back to numbers: when dealing with communist "records" and communist death tolls, there will always be controversy since communist authorities were known not to keep truthful and correct numbers ...how they kept even the record on milk production was an endless source of popular jokes. What is clear to me is that communist official documents meant for public eyes are not to be trusted (this I guess is evident). So what we are left with is sometimes not enough to make comfortable estimates. I myself was not shocked by the numbers. We grew up knowing the Communists killed, that they killed many, and that they had great state institutions at their disposal to mask it/lie about it and immense idiocy in their brain to cause them to slip the truth sometimes/ unintentionally spoil records other times. I think social conditions in most these countries were such that it would be a great shock if Communism hadn't killed tens of millions of people. So numbers are too low, too big? It's too early to tell...many documents to be uncovered a lot of fog left to clear. I think a dry simple table at the end of each chapter summarizing the death total and how it was counted/estimated would have been useful. As I've said I'm not a big fan of this quantitative approach but couldn't they be more rigorous about it? Especially with shaky material (communist records) researchers should double their effort and make sure they cleared up as much as possible. Add 100 pages to the book, fill them with dry numbers and boring short explanations.
I wanted so badly to give this book 5 stars. I give it 4. Maybe it deserves 3 (Especially for that Part III) but I am biased! Consider 1 star for the tremendous effort and for opening I hope a new road for more detailed and encompassing research. In the end I am grateful for this book, for breaking a little bit of what appears to be an overall long and dreadful silence: because some won't ask, some won't tell, most want to forget.
PS Sorry if this was too long..,again, this is my first review and I already reached its 20th draft.
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Review Summary: We fought the wrong country in WWII if you just look at numbers dead |
Date: 2008-10-03 |
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Details: I've studied history for years. After reading this book I had to question if we didn't have the wrong allies during WWII. Russia killed millions & millions more than the Germans ever did & then spread Communism throughout the world which killed millions and millions more. Germany got the prototype for their work/death/concentration camps from RUSSIA and Lenin. Russia never had an accounting of the deaths in their camps (TO THIS DAY) because they were never beated & exposed. Ditto China. Ditto...on and on.
It is a fantastic read exposing the deaths communist country by communist country. Shocking. The Russian archives were open and much of the info was newly uncovered.
Great read for any history buff. |
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Review Summary: Includes a Comprehensive Account of Poles; Number of Victims Understated |
Date: 2008-09-08 |
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Details: Instead of repeating other reviewers, let's focus on Paczkowski's chapter on Poland (pp. 363-393), and related matters. His chapter spans the 1917-1939 oppression of Soviet Poles, the WWII Gulags, the postwar imposition of the Soviet puppet state, and Communist rule until its 1989 nominal end.
Consider the situation facing Soviet Poles in 1931-1938: "The Poles account for some 10 percent of the victims of the Great Purge, and for around 40 percent of the victims of purges against national minorities. These figures are, if anything, understated, since thousands of Poles were deported from Ukraine and Belorussia for reasons unconnected with the `Polish Operation'." (p. 367).
Ironic to complaints about this book citing hyper-inflated numbers of victims, Paczkowski's quoted archival Communist sources do the exact opposite. The 1939-1941 Polish deportees, at 340,000 (up to about 500,000; p. 372), are dwarfed by other estimates (1 million or more: p. 209). The Poles killed during the early-postwar imposition of Communism (1945-1948), at 8,700 (p. 376), constitute a tenfold smaller death toll than others estimate. Paczkowski doesn't explain this. Does he tacitly suppose that archival data is the most reliable? (I talked with a historian having firsthand experience with Communist archives. He told me that the completeness of archival data cannot be assumed without cross-checks against other information. Internal Communist archives are rife with falsifications at all levels. The common argument that there was no reason for falsifying data unintended for public consumption is a fallacious one).
The imposition of the Soviet puppet state on Poland shouldn't be called a civil war, as most of the 1944-1947 antagonists were Soviet troops and NKVD. (p. 376). Were Communists just targeting their opponents? Far from it! "From 1945 through 1947, thousands of people who had never taken any part in opposition activity fell victim to pacification campaigns and preventive measures..." (p. 380). One would think that, with the crushing of appreciable pro-independence Polish guerilla activity by 1947, Communist repression would've slackened. To the contrary: "After 1948, the Security Service used terror to subjugate the whole of society...The [Extraordinary Commission's] rulings became more and more repressive. In 1945-1948, it sent 10,900 people to forced-labor camps; in 1949-1952 the figure reached 46,700. The total for the years up to 1954 was 84,200. These verdicts were not for political crimes...This was a period when everyone seemed to be going to prison..." (p. 380, 382).
Even in later years, Communist murders never ceased. Based on the fact that the UB was strictly regulated by orders, Paczkowski rejects the contention that the murderers of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, in 1984, had acted alone. (p. 390).
Finally, let's clarify Feliks Dzierzhinsky and the Polish constituents of the Cheka. Although its original membership of about 100 (in December 1917) was indeed disproportionately of Polish and Baltic origin (p. 62), this situation was very temporary. In fact, within a short six months (June 1918), the Cheka's membership had exploded to 12,000, followed by further growth to 40,000 members (by late 1918), and to over 280,000 (in early 1921). (p. 62, 68).
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Review Summary: One-sided, perhaps? |
Date: 2008-06-15 |
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Details: I don't believe in letting any regime off the hook for its crimes. That includes the current regime in my own country, which is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, and, as of 2006, imprisoned 7.2 million people, way more than the number of dissidents locked up in Cuba. But we're not supposed to talk about America's racist gulag system.
Call me silly, but I think we should apply the same standards across the board. According to Jean Ziegler (the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for 2000 to March 2008), across the world, mortality due to malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality in 2006: "In the world, approximately 62 millions people, all causes of death combined, die each year. In 2006, more than 36 millions died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients." Applying the same logic that the authors applied to the Chinese famine, shouldn't we call these people victims of market Capitalism (the so-called "communist" states, by the way, were state capitalist systems)? But that doesn't fit today's prevailing ideology, so we can't say that.
Read Noam Chomsky's review of this book here: [...] |
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Review Summary: Review of Reviews |
Date: 2008-06-11 |
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Details: I read this book some time ago and it engaged me big time, so I was surprised to see the number of negative reviews here. I read each of them carefully to see what those reviewers didn't like. Several of them mention the evils of Capitalism and how many deaths capitalists are responsible for. Even if this were true, so what? Such an observation does not affect the credibility of THIS book. Maybe those reviewers are Communist or socialist apologists, or just US haters.
The fact is, most of us cannot judge the scholarship of a book like this. We have to read critically as best we can--and we can look at what other reviewers say. When I can't decide to get a book or not, I look at the negative reviews on Amazon, and that cab help me decide. If the negative reviews ring true, I am less likely to get the book than if they ring hollow. The negative reviews of this book ring hollow. |
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