The Black Book of Communism

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.

www.hup.harvard.edu...

www.fas.harvard.edu...

www.zmag.org...

Where are my little commies friends and their comments ?

What's happen guys ? You don't know what you have to say on this matter ?

A jolly little Ctrl+V, Ultra_Phoe.; but what is it telling us?
We'll set aside the point of quoting Silone -as dreadful in Italian as in translation -a man with the morality and honour of a wayward virus, the integrity of plasma - who was a Communist, a Socialist anti-Communist, a "Christian without a church" (che???) and then on his own admission turned out to have been a Fascist informer for a decade!
And what in the name of Karl Marx (and Groucho, for that matter) is the "the millenarian (sic) ideology of Communism"? Sheer drivel.
The names and places are all old hat and quite useless since any died-in-the-wool Bolshie will retort "this wasn't real Communism" and bore one to death with an idiot's-eye view of "Das Kapital for the Unthinking"
And, with a similar disregard for discrimination of clear thinking one could produce such a list for Capitalism, Colonialism, Imperialism..you name it.
This might at best have been a link to evidence discussing the issues -but pasting rot in order to regale us with second-hand rot is less helpful.
Most interesting is why this is being pushed upon the public now, and why the archives were opened.
Who would benefit?

And these are all so long ago and far away -with the exception of Castro (scarcely Pol Pot -even to the worst of his enemies)
What is served by dredging up this nonsense -how would you feel if someone started gibbering on about Belgian collaboration with the Nazis, for Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt had to issue the country's first official apology, last year, and then started attacking the modern Belgian?
Quite aggrieved, and quite rightly so.
This "history" is utterly useless without selection, the clarification of issues and terms, and the presentation of a cogent case that has contemporary relevance.

posted by Estragon

how would you feel if someone started gibbering on about Belgian collaboration with the Nazis,

Well Estragon, it's already done. And I'm not upset. We had to do it.It helped us to see that we have very few collabos, less than France and others country, especialy like Sweden who was neutral and was not under nazi occupation, but where many Swedish joined the Waffen SS.

posted by Estragon

for Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt had to issue the country's first official apology, last year, and then started attacking the modern Belgian ?

1) Verhofstadt is a fool.
2) He didn't attack actuals Belgians.

posted by Estragon

This "history" is utterly useless without selection, the clarification of issues and terms, and the presentation of a cogent case that has contemporary relevance.

It has relevance and it's NOT useless. Many supporters from former USSR or others communists country like Cuba, N-Ko and China are still alive and they didn't give any excuses. I remember these peoples, when they were telling us that Mao, Uncle Ho, Stalin or Pol Pot were the goods guys. And now, they are pro-Saddam or pro-palestinians.

You can understand my point of view. They were pro-tyrants and anti-West. They didn't change their views. They are still anti-west, that's why we can see almost all of them pro-Saddam or pro-Muslim and anti-USA.

They just change their name. Now, they like to call themselves " humanists " , " progresists ", " ecologists " and so on....

We have to know our past, it will help us in our present and it will preserve our future.

I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I was talking to my father the other day about his time in Vietnam. I was specifically curious about the viewpoint the South Vietnamese had on the democracy- v- Communism thing. My father said the people really couldn't afford the luxury of debating the pros and cons of the two economic systems as they were too busy trying to grow food and stay alive.

All Uncle Ho (What was his given name before he took the name Ho Chi Minh?) asked of the U.S. after WWII and during their battle for freedom from France was that we say a good thing or two about them in the world community and not to aide or support France in their attempts to maintain its colonial rule over Vietnam. We turned our backs on our WWII ally, Vietnam, and supported France, a nation who itself just became liberated from conquest by Germany. We turned a once ally and beautiful nation into an enemy, and pushed them into the arms of the Soviet Union.

I have no idea what I was getting at, but maybe there's a point in there somewhere. Somebody really should take my keyboard away from me when I take NyQuill!

No, you right TC. In the beginning of his anti-France campaign, Uncle Ho asked this to the USA : " May I use your Constition ? It's the marvellous cons from the whole world and I would like to do a Vietnamese Constitution based on your own "

Unfortunately, he was a communist, not a democrat, and called Peking & Moscow for some help. So, the USA told him " NIET " !

You know the rest of this sad story. 1945/1954, a war against the France.
1954 : He setted up the VC in the south.
1954 : US help the South vs the VC.
1964/1973(1975), the war against the South and his allie, the USA.