The Black Book of Communism

1091:, the 'Nazi/Soviet similarities' are insufficient to make denunciation a specifically 'totalitarian' phenomenon." He criticizes this argument by stating that "the difference between Nazi/Communist systems and Western ones is 'not qualitative but quantitative.' By implication, therefore, singling out Communist and Nazi terror in order to equate them becomes Cold War slander—the ideological subtext, as it happens, of twenty-five years of 'revisionist,' social-reductionist Sovietology." He further criticizes it by making the point that "this fact-for-fact's sake approach suggests that there is nothing specifically Communist about Communist terror—and, it would seem, nothing particularly Nazi about Nazi terror either." He states that "the bloody Soviet experiment is banalized in one great gray anthropological blur; and the Soviet Union is transmogrified into just another country in just another age, neither more nor less evil than any other regime going", and dismisses this as "obviously nonsense." For Malia, "the problem of moral judgment" is "inseparable from any real understanding of the past" and "from being human." 1123:, Courtois further says: "This book is one of the first attempts to study Communism with a focus on its criminal dimensions, in both the central regions of Communist rule and the farthest reaches of the globe. Some will say that most of these crimes were actions conducted in accordance with a system of law that was enforced by the regimes' official institutions, which were recognized internationally and whose heads of state continued to be welcomed with open arms. But was this not the case with Nazism as well? The crimes we shall expose are to be judged not by the standards of Communist regimes, but by the unwritten code of natural laws of humanity." Courtois states that "he legal ramification of crimes committed by a specific country were first confronted in 1945 at the Nuremberg Tribunal, which was organized by the Allies to consider the atrocities committed by the Nazis." Courtois writes that "n examination of all the crimes committed by the Leninist/Stalinist regime, and in the Communist world as a whole, reveals crimes that fit into each of these three categories", namely 745:, to include 'every possible death just to run up the score.' To an extent, the charge is valid. Courtois and other contributors to the volume equate the people shot, hanged, or killed in prisons or the camps with those who were victims of calculated political famines (in the Chinese and Soviet cases), or who otherwise starved for lack of food or died for lack of drugs." Based on the results of their studies, Courtois estimated the total number of the victims at between 65 and 93 million, an unjustified and unclear sum according to Margolin and Werth. In particular, Margolin, who authored the book's chapter on Vietnam, stated that "he has never mentioned a million deaths in Vietnam"; Margolin likened Courtois's effort to "militant political activity, indeed, that of a prosecutor amassing charges in the service of a cause, that of a global condemnation of the Communist phenomenon as an essentially criminal phenomenon." Historians 1100:

always encounter a double standard as long as there exist a left and a right", which he "roughly define as the priority of compassionate egalitarianism for the one, and as the primacy of prudential order for the other." Malia states that "ince neither principle can be applied absolutely without destroying society, the modern world lives in perpetual tension between the irresistible pressure for equality and the functional necessity of hierarchy." For Malia, it is "this syndrome" which "gives the permanent qualitative advantage to Communism over Nazism in any evaluation of their quantitative atrocities. For the Communist projects, in origin, claimed commitment to universalistic and egalitarian goals, whereas the Nazi projects offered only unabashed national egoism", causing their practices to be "comparable" and their "moral auras" to be "antithetical."

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there never was a "benign, initial phase of Communism before some mytical 'wrong turn' threw it off track", claiming that Lenin expected and wanted from the start a civil war "to crush all 'class enemies'; and this war, principally against the peasants, continued with only short pauses until 1953." Malia further says that the Red Terror "cannot be explained as the prolongation of prerevolutionary political cultures", but rather as "a deliberate policy of the new revolutionary order; and its scope and inhumanity far exceeded anything in the national past." Malia laments that "'Positivist' social scientists ... have averred that moral questions are irrelevant to understanding the past" and criticizes this perspective by arguing that it "reduces politics and ideology everywhere to anthropology."

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product of social process", faulting that "researches have endlessly insisted that the October Revolution was a workers' revolt and not a Party coup d'état, when it was obviously the latter riding piggyback on the former." According to Malia, "the central issue in Communist history is not the Party's ephemeral worker 'base'; it is what the intelligentsia victors of October later did with their permanent coup d'etat, and so far this has scarcely been explored." Malia then goes on to describe "two fantasies holding out the promise of a better Soviet socialism than the one the Bolsheviks actually built." The first one is "the 'Bukharin alternative' to Stalin" which Malia describes as "a thesis that purports to offer a nonviolent, market road to socialism—that is, Marx's

885:, only Courtois made the comparison between Communism and Nazism, while the other sections of the book "are, in effect, narrowly focused monographs, which do not pretend to offer overarching explanations." Paczkowski wonders whether it can be applied "the same standard of judgment to, on the one hand, an ideology that was destructive at its core, that openly planned genocide, and that had an agenda of aggression against all neighboring (and not just neighboring) states, and, on the other hand, an ideology that seemed clearly the opposite, that was based on the secular desire of humanity to achieve equality and social justice, and that promised a great leap of forward into freedom", and states that while a good question, it is hardly new and inappropriate because 1192:, "his gigantic volume, the sum of works of 11 historians, social scientists, and journalists, is less important for the content, but for the social storm it has provoked in France. ... What Werth and some of his colleagues object to is 'the manipulation of the figures of the numbers of people killed' (Courtois talks of almost 100 million, including 65 million in China); 'the use of shock formulas, the juxtaposition of histories aimed at asserting the comparability and, next, the identities of fascism, and Nazism, and communism.' Indeed, Courtois would have been far more effective if he had shown more restraint." 919:. In 2012, Tismăneanu wrote that "in the case of communism one can identify an inner dynamic that could and did in fact contrast the original promises to the sordidly criminal practices. In other words, there was a possible search for reforms, and even for socialism with a human face, within the communist world, but such a thing would have been unthinkable under Nazism. The chasm between theory and practice, or at least between the moral-humanist Marxian (or socialist) creed, and the Leninist, Stalinist (or Maoist, or Khmer Rouge) experiments was more than an intellectual fantasy." 38: 1112:"inopportune because equating Communism with Nazism removed the 'last barriers to legitimating the extreme right,' that is, Le Pen." While stating it is true that "Le Pen's party and similar hate-mongering, xenophobic movements elsewhere in Europe represents an alarming new phenomenon that properly concerns all liberal democrats", Malia writes that in no way does it follow that "Communism's criminal past should be ignored or minimized." Malia writes that "the persistence of such sophistry is precisely why 534:

those who saw it as the socialist end of history and those who considered it history's most vital tyranny." According to Malia, "more than eighty years after 1917, probing examination of the Big Questions raised by the Marxist-Leninist phenomenon has hardly begun" and that "a serious historiography was precluded in Soviet Russia by the regime's mandatory ideology", further stating that "scholarly investigation of Communism has until recently fallen disproportionately to Westerns." Malia writes that "

2006:: the figure of 100 million deaths and the parallel with Nazism. They became central in the debate that followed. ... In articles and interviews Werth and Margolin pointed out how, in the service of this goal, Courtois distorted and exaggerated: Werth's total, including the Civil War and the famine of 1932–1933 had been five million less than Courtois's 'mythical number,' while Margolin denied having spoken of the Vietnamese Communists being responsible for one million deaths. Interviewed in 1471:

not astonish their readers, "dramatize the sufferings of the victims of Communism", or focus on quarrels over exact numbers of victims, affirming that there is no serious moral difference between the lower and higher estimated numbers. Speaking of the relative immorality of Communism and Nazism, Ryan said that the "body count tips the scales against Communism", but that if the "intrinsic evil of the entire project" is considered, Nazism is still worse because it was exterminationist.

953:, writing: "The Reich Security Head Office issued to the commandants a full collection of reports concerning the Russian concentration camps. These described in great detail the conditions in, and organization of, the Russian camps, as supplied by former prisoners who had managed to escape. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that the Russians, by their massive employment of forced labor, had destroyed whole peoples." His remarks and comparisons were deemed by critics to be 1084:, summarizing its response as "spurning reductionist sociology as a device to exculpate Communism", that "Marxist-Leninist regimes are cast in the same ideological and organizational mold throughout the world", and that "this pertinent point also had its admonitory subtext: that socialists of whatever stripe cannot be trusted to resist their ever-present demons on the far left (those popular fronts were no accident after all)." 505:

whether the ideology itself is "blameless", stating that "here will always be some nitpickers who maintain that actual Communism has nothing in common with theoretical communism" and that "it would be absurd to claim that doctrines expounded prior to Jesus Christ, during the Renaissance, or even in the nineteenth century were responsible for the events that took place in the twentieth century." Quoting

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dear to Bukharin, a revolution ultimately leading to massive upward mobility from the factory bench." Malia writes that "perhaps a moral, rather than a social, approach to the Communist phenomenon can yield a truer understanding for the much-investigated Soviet social process claimed victims on a scale that has never aroused a scholarly curiosity at all proportionate to the magnitude of the disaster."

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David-Fox criticized the idea to connect the deaths with some "generic Communism" concept, defined down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals. David-Fox also described "Malia's comparison and rhetorical equation of erstwhile social-history revisionists in the Soviet field with David Irving and other Holocaust deniers" as "a quintessentially ideological move."

1209:) publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Margolin and Werth felt that Courtois was "obsessed" with arriving at a total of 100 million killed, which resulted in "sloppy and biased scholarship", faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries, and rejected the comparison between Communism and Nazism. 774:(think of North Korea, China, Cuba, Vietnam, where it is still alive, if not well). lasted between 1933 and 1945. Second, we simply do not know what the price in terms of victims of Nazism would have been had Hitler won the war. The logical hypothesis is that not only Jews and Gypsies but also millions of Slavs and other 'racially unfit' individuals would have been destined to death." 881:; rather than "indistinguishable evils", they emphasized a marked distinction in ideology. Courtois responded in the same newspaper with an essay in 1997. Werth compared the idea to ascribe all crimes committed by Communist states to communism with the idea to "throw in the face of a liberal the crimes committed in all the countries that claimed to be liberal." According to historian 820:: "The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious." Weiner wrote that "hen Stalin's successors opened the gates of the Gulag, they allowed 3 million inmates to return home. When the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps, they found thousands of human skeletons barely alive awaiting what they knew to be inevitable execution." Historian 996:. For Courtois, both Communist and Nazi systems deemed "a part of humanity unworthy of existence. The difference is that the Communist model is based on the class system, the Nazi model on race and territory." Courtois writes: "Here, the genocide of a 'class' may well be tantamount to the genocide of a "race"—the deliberate starvation of a child of a Ukrainian 1019:

unavoidable comparison of this sum with that for Nazism, which at an estimated 25 million turns out to be distinctly less murderous than Communism." According to Malia, "he shocking dimensions of the Communist tragedy" are "hardly news to any serious student of twentieth-century history, at least when the different Leninist regimes are taken individually."

4868: 1482:'s research on hunger. While India's democratic institutions prevented famines, its excess of mortality over China—potentially attributable to the latter's more equal distribution of medical and other resources—was nonetheless close to 4 million per year for non-famine years. Chomsky wrote that "supposing we now apply the methodology of the 4679: 732:

mostly focused on three aspects, namely that the estimates were based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable, that the figures were skewed to higher possible values, and that those dying at war and victims of civil wars, Holodomor, and other famines under Communist regimes should not be counted.

1030:. He states that Courtois raised the point of how Western intellectuals, Communist sympathizers and apologists for Communist leaders were complicit in Communist crimes, and that they only rejected them "discreetly and in silence." According to Malia, the French right has been tainted by its association with the Nazi 4799: 2010:, Margolin likened Courtois's effort to 'militant political activity, indeed, that of a prosecutor amassing charges in the service of a cause, that of a global condemnation of the Communist phenomenon as an essentially criminal phenomenon.' Both rejected the comparison between Communism and Nazism: ... ." 854:

academic journal, Marxist philosopher Robert Steigerwald wrote: "The book's main thesis reads thus: our century's fundamental crime was not the Holocaust, but rather the existence of Communism. Through the manipulation of numbers—only twenty-five million human lives fell victim to Hitler, one hundred

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that "the Revolution of 1917 was one of the great events of the century. ... And if the had taken so long to denounce Stalinism, it had done so anyway." Jospin added that "the PCF had learned the lessons from its history. It is represented in my government and I'm proud of it." In a 21 November 1997

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This and other communist death tolls have been criticized by various historians and scholars. Any attempt to estimate a total number of killings under communist regimes depends greatly on definitions, ranging from a low of 10–20 million to as high as 110 million. Criticism of some of the estimates is

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Dallin, Alexander (Winter 2000). "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. By Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, and Jean-Louis Margolin. Trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. xx,

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summarized the authors as charging that Communism was a criminal system, while others such as Werth gave more nuanced views, and stated that "despite Courtois' brave attempt in the conclusion, however, the authors fail to answer their own central question: Why did communism, when in power, start and

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and gives the date as 17 October 1917; the letter could hardly have originated at that time, since in it Lenin talks about the need to defeat the Tsarist government, and turn the war into a civil conflict. He gives credit to the Austro-Hungarian rather than the German army for the conquest of Poland

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According to Malia, there is a "basic problem" in Western historiography of Communism which he describes as "the conceptual poverty of the Western empirical effort." Malia states that "his poverty flows from the premise that Communism can be understood, in an aseptic and value-free mode, as the pure

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In his foreword to the English-language and American edition, Malia states that "Communism has been the great story of the twentieth century" and "it had come to rule a third of mankind and seemed poised to advance indefinitely. For seven decades it haunted world politics, polarizing opinion between

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Courtois writes that "egardless of the role that theoretical communist doctrines may have played in the practice of real Communism before 1917", it was what he terms "flesh-and-blood Communism" which "imposed wholesale repression, culminating in a state-sponsored reign of terror." Courtois then asks

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states that the book has played a major role in what she terms the criminalization of Communism in the European political space in the post Cold War-era. According to Neumayer, "by making criminality the very essence of communism, by explicitly equating the 'race genocide' of Nazism with the 'class

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has played a dual role, both chronicling the crimes of various Communist regimes and also serving as a text that reveals the shifting status of Marxism in the aftermath of the Cold War. Much of the controversy that has surrounded the book has focused on Stephane Courtois's introduction, in which he

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as a result of the famine caused by the Nazi regime. According to Courtois, "the intransigent facts demonstrate that Communist regimes have victimized approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million of the Nazis." Courtois further says that "the Jewish genocide became a

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wrote: "Speaking of the number of victims under communist regimes (between 85 and 100 million) and comparing this horrible figure to number of people who perished under or because of Nazism (25 million), Courtois decided to downplay a few crucial facts. In this respect, some of his critics were not

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socialism, which necessitates the full suppression of private property, profit, and the market." The second one "purports to find the impetus behind Stalin's 'revolution from above' of 1929–1933 in a 'cultural revolution' from below by Party activists and workers against the 'bourgeois' specialists

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offers us the first attempt to determine, overall, the actual magnitude of what occurred, by systematically detailing Leninism's 'crimes, terror, and repression' from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989." Malia also argues against what he terms "the fable of 'good Lenin/bad Stalin'", stating that

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wrote that "o the extent that the book has a literary style, it is that of the recording angel; this is the body count of a colossal, wholly failed social, economic, political and psychological experiment. It is a criminal indictment, and it rightly reads like one." Ryan stated that the authors do

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cited the numerous critiques, including it being called "a crudely anticommunist, anti-Semitic work", and agreed that "excessive moralizing makes objective analysis of the past difficult—and perhaps impossible", and the book has weaknesses but wrote that it has had two positive effects, among them

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Malia asks "What of the moral equivalence of Communism and Nazism?" Malia writes that "fter fifty years of debate, it is clear that no matter what the hard facts are, degrees of totalitarian evil will be measured as much in terms of present politics as in terms of past realities" and that "we will

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stated that while "nalytical distinctions between them are certainly important, and sometimes Courtois does not emphasize them sufficiently", their "commonality in terms of complete contempt for the bourgeois state of law, human rights, and the universality of humankind regardless of spurious race

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questioned "hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss." Historians Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermann wrote that a connection

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Malia strongly agrees with Courtois, describing it as "a 'tragedy of planetary dimensions' ..., with a grand total of victims variously estimated by contributors to the volume at between 85 million and 100 million" and stating that what he terms the "full power of the shock" was "delivered by the

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as a unique atrocity has also prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world. After all, it seems scarcely plausible that the victors who had helped bring about the destruction of a genocidal apparatus might themselves have put the very same methods into

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Several reviewers have singled out Werth's "State against Its People" as being the most notable and best researched contribution in the book. Historian Ronald Aronson stated that " is concerned, fortunately, neither to minimize nor to maximize numbers, but to accurately determine what happened."

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criticized the figures as well as the idea to combine loosely connected events under a single category of Communist death toll, blaming Courtois for their manipulation and deliberate inflation which are presented to advocate the idea that Communism was a greater evil than Nazism. In particular,

1073:

as arguing that "it is illegitimate to speak of a single Communist movement from Phnom Penh to Paris. Rather, the rampage of the Khmer Rouge is like the ethnic massacres of third-world Rwanda, or the 'rural' Communism of Asia is radically different from the 'urban' Communism of Europe; or Asian

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Many observers have rejected Courtois' numerical and moral comparison of communism to Nazism in the introduction, the claim made in the book that "a lot of what they describe 'crimes, terror, and repression' has somehow been kept from the general public", According to Werth, there was still a

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wrote: "The comparison with Nazism is inevitable. It is merited on the grounds of the mutual commitment to social engineering through violent means; the ensuing demographic, psychological, and ethical implications; and, not least, the fact that both systems constantly scrutinized one another.

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According to the introduction, the number of people killed by the Communist governments amounts to more than 94 million. The statistics of victims include deaths through executions, man-made hunger, famine, war, deportations, and forced labor. The breakdown of the number of deaths is given as

1531:

may be seen as an effort to legitimize the claims to memorialization and reparations of those who suffered under Communism. Such claims have become high stakes in an era that frequently rewards those who can demonstrate that they, too, have been victimized in the past." In a 2001 article for

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regimes. The work was praised by a broad range of popular-press publications and historians, while academic press and specialist reviews were more critical or mixed for some historical inaccuracies. The introduction by Courtois was especially criticized, including by three of the book's main

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stands out as a significant work that should be required reading for all modern historians. Each essay stands alone as an important scholarly contribution. At the same time, the essays hang together well. It is interesting also that all of the writers have political roots in European left."

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Whereas chapters of the book that describe the events in separate Communist states were praised for the most part, some generalizations made by Courtois in the introduction to the book became a subject of criticism both on scholarly and political grounds. Moreover, three of the book's main

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Malia writes that the "ultimate distinguishing characteristic" of Nazism is the Holocaust which, according to Malia, is considered as historically unique. He laments that "Hitler and Nazism are now a constant presence in Western print and on Western television", while "Stalin and Communism

4644: 1578:, their intense relationship with the Communist project could have similar consequences for the national psyche", and that Courtois, Lazar's former collaborator, believes French intellectuals have never "done their mourning of revolutionary ideology and of Leninism." A 2019 review for 1556:

contributed to legitimising the equivalence of Nazi and Communist crimes. The book figures prominently in the 'spaces of the anti-communist cause' comparably structured in the former satellite countries, which are a major source of the discourse criminalising the Socialist period."

2001:

s authors. ... Courtois's figures for the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Latin America go far beyond the estimates of the authors themselves, as does Courtois's final body count. ... But two other theses created considerable consternation and have come to be associated with

824:

remarked that Courtois' comparison of 100 million victims of Communism to 25 million victims of Nazism leaves out "most of the 40–60,000,000 lives lost in the Second World War, for which arguably Hitler and not Stalin was principally responsible." Alongside philosopher

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wrote that "the book was a turning point in the emergence of a consensual historical narrative across the former East-West divide as it enabled the formation of a revamped pan-European anti-communist movement." In a 2021 editorial in the eco-socialist journal

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According to this argument, " moral man can have 'no enemies to the left,' a perspective in which undue insistence on Communist crime only 'plays into the hands of the right'—if, indeed, any anticommunism is not simply a mask for antiliberalism." Malia cites

473:, Courtois states that "the Communism that concerns us does not exist in the transcendent sphere of ideas. This Communism is altogether real; it has existed at key moments of history and in particular countries, brought to life by its famous leaders", citing 3740:

Wynot, Jennifer (Fall 2003). "Reviewed Work: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Margolin, Jonathan Murphy, Mark Kramer, Martin Malia".

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succeeds in demonstrating ... that Communism in its Leninist version (and, one must recognize, this has been the only successful application of the original dogma) was from the very outset inimical to the values of individual rights and human freedom." In

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Communism is really only anticolonial nationalism", further stating that "conflating sociologically diverse movements" is "merely a stratagem to obtain a higher body count against Communism, and thus against all the left." He criticizes this as "

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wrote that "he myth of the well-intentioned founders—the good czar Lenin betrayed by his evil heirs—has been laid to rest for good. No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of Communism." In

1217:

criticized the chapter written by Werth, arguing that "Werth can also be an extremely careless historian. He gives the number of Bolsheviks in October 1917 as 2,000, which is a ridiculous underestimate. He quotes from a letter of Lenin to

4789: 1486:" to India, "the democratic capitalist 'experiment' has caused more deaths than in the entire history of ... Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, and tens of millions more since, in India alone." Historian 4749: 1965: 1679:

has not said everything." Like the first effort, this second work was edited by Courtois. The book focused on the history of Communism in Eastern Europe. Several translations of the book were marketed as the second volume of

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has been especially influential in Eastern Europe, where it was uncritically embraced by prominent politicians and intellectuals—many of these intellectuals popularized it using terminology and concepts popular with the

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stirring a debate about the implementation of totalitarian ideologies and "an exhaustive balance sheet about one aspect of the worldwide phenomenon of communism." According to honorary professor David J. Galloway, "

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titled "Die Aufarbeitung des Sozialismus in der DDR" ("The Processing of Socialism in the GDR"). It consists of two subchapters, namely "Politische Verbrechen in der DDR" ("Political Crimes in the GDR") by

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wrote that moral, legal, or political judgments hardly depend on the number of victims. Getty criticized Malia as a "specialist on the 19th century who has never done original research on the Soviet era."

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in the book. According to Courtois, "e must make a distinction between the doctrine of communism and its practice. As a political philosophy, communism has existed for centuries, even millennia." Citing

4804: 2475: 1592:(1997), these essays are both nuanced and balanced, presenting Lenin and Stalin as human leaders driven as much by realpolitik and personal histories and events as by Communist ideology." In a 2019 4578: 1600:"is still up for debate by historians, political scientists and economists. It's not an easy claim to fact-check, and is ultimately a matter of opinion." In 2020, political scientist Valentin Behr 1066:, who "was ostracized worldwide once his Nazi past was uncovered", while the same treatment was not applied to Communists, with Communist monuments still standing in the former Communist states. 1116:

is so opportune", much like Courtois' reasoning for writing the book that "the crimes of Communism have yet to receive a fair and just assessment from both historical and moral viewpoints."

1994:

Aronson wrote: "But most of these problems pale in significance compared with the book's opening and closing chapters, which caused enormous controversy and even occasioned a break among

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and giving a definitive number of "victims of communism", which critics have described as inflated. Werth's chapter, however, stood out as a positive. The book's title was chosen to echo

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reduce the comparison to body counting, charging communists with killing nearly 100 million people and the Nazis, 25 million. At best, this approach is ahistorical and demeaning."

1259:'s Cambodia and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the 1176:

for crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux to Hitler's death camps. Papon's lawyers introduced the book as evidence for the defense." The

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systems, stating that Communist regimes have killed "approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million victims of the Nazis." Courtois claims that

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in his foreword. Courtois writes that "Communist regimes turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government" and are responsible for a greater number of deaths than

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byword for modern barbarism, the epitome of twentieth-century mass terror. ... More recently, a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize

4298:[Renaud Escande (ed.), The Black Book of the French Revolution, 2008] (in French). Institut d'Histoire de la Révolution française. February 2008. Archived from 1639:

regimes, which are to be rigorously critiqued but should nonetheless be considered part of it, rather than denying any family resemblances with communism, like some on

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criticized Courtois for failing to draw a distinction between victims of neglect and famine and victims of "intentional murder." Regarding these questions, historian

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prompted the publication of several other "black books" which argued that similar chronicles of violence and death tolls can be constructed from an examination of

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has been translated into numerous languages, has sold millions of copies, and is considered one of the most influential and controversial books written about the

1235:"is formulated in an extremely conservative way, since the actual number of victims was much larger", with 1,000,000–1,500,000 excess deaths. Historians such as 1574:, quoting fellow historian Marc Lazar as saying that "just as the intense relationship of the French with their national history created the conditions for the 1034:, whereas "'knowing the truth about the U.S.S.R.' has never been an academic matter" until the time the book was published. Malia then cites the example of the 855:

million to Communism worldwide—the impression is created that Communism is four times worse than fascism and that the Holocaust was not a uniquely evil crime."

2182: 4564: 1929: 1172:"received both praise and criticism. ... The book was especially controversial in France because it was published during the 1997 trial of Nazi collaborator 525:

and Thomas More. Courtois claims that "the crimes of Communism have yet to receive a fair and just assessment from both historical and moral viewpoints."

4784: 1498:, the book ignores the effect of international factors, including military interventions, invasions, sanctions, and coups, on the Communist experience. 814:

qualitative difference between communism and Nazism, stating: "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union." On 21 September 2000, Werth further told

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wrote that "ome critics complained that Courtois was 'hunting' for the highest possible number of victims, which led him, as J. Arch Getty wrote in the

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provides an excellent survey of scholarship on the Soviet system and the systems of other communist states", and said that this emphasis is valuable.

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as 'elected'. He incorrectly writes that the peasant rebels during the civil war did more harm to the Reds than to the Whites, and so on." Historian

414:" of the 20th century; they distinguish it from small-c communism, which has existed for millennia, while capital-c Communism began in 1917 with the 4914: 3508: 4929: 4701: 4503: 4043: 3001:

by Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer"

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by Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Margolin, Jonathan Murphy, Mark Kramer".

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collapse the myth of a benign, initial phase of communism before it was diverted from the right path by circumstances." Political scientist

1026:) is incorporated into French law, the "class genocide" of Communism can be equated with the "race genocide" of Nazism and categorized as a 873:, they contributed to "the debates on comparisons between Nazism and communism", with Sémelin describing this as a theory also developed in 4899: 1915:

Karel Bartošek (1930–2004), a historian from the Czech Republic and researcher at the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent (IHTP) in Paris.

3634: 2870: 2771:

David-Fox, Michael (Winter 2004). "On the Primacy of Ideology: Soviet Revisionists and Holocaust Deniers (In Response to Martin Malia)".

2709: 4934: 4779: 2681: 518: 4661: 4600: 4435: 4175: 4154: 4133: 4112: 3416: 2067: 1783: 150: 3098:. Translated by Schoch, Cynthia. CERI Series in Comparative Politics and International Studies. New York: Columbia University Press. 4924: 4894: 4759: 4621: 4409: 4376: 4358: 4340: 3999: 3662: 3443: 3283: 3262: 2663: 2484: 1793: 710: 4218: 1054:

materialize only sporadically", with the status of former Communists carrying no stigma. Malia also laments a double standard in

699: 4889: 4869:

Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests

1919: 1534: 4066: 1232: 4427: 4295: 3146:

Reid, Donald (June 2005). "In Search of the Communist Syndrome: Opening the Black Book of the New Anti-Communism in France".

1753:

and received mostly negative reviews from both the press and historians. Courtois went back to its proposed link between the

1580: 1450: 1396: 1224: 973:. Courtois defended himself from the charges by citing the Russian-Jewish writer Vasily Grossman, who compared the deaths of 446:' that began in Sarajevo in 1914 and ended in Moscow in 1991, finds itself at center states in the story. Communism predated 360: 3924: 3561: 2718: 903:

and class distinctions is in my view beyond doubt." Tismăneanu said that in making this comparison, Courtois was drawing on

3463: 509:("Revolutions, like trees, are recognized by the fruit they bear"), Courtois says that "t was not without reason" that the 3854: 1839: 1543:

argues that communism represents a greater evil than Nazism, largely based on Marxism-Leninism's heftier death tally." In

1432: 1301: 562: 377: 4390: 1832: 1562: 950: 450:

and Nazism, outlived both, and left its mark on four continents." Courtois goes on to explain what is meant by the term

365: 4451:. Harvard University. 15 October 1999. Retrieved 18 August 2021. Extracts by the publisher from many different reviews. 2738: 1974:

Pierre Rigoulet, a political historian, human rights activist and researcher at the Institut d'Histoire Sociale (IHTP).

1527:

s relatively scanty scholarly contribution, it is hard to read the book in other than political terms. In this regard,

3192:

Tismăneanu, Vladimir (January 2001). "Communism and the Human Condition: Reflections on the Black Book of Communism".

1607: 1306: 1244: 720: 346: 801:, Courtois stated: "In my opinion, there is nothing exceptional about the Nazi genocide against the Jews." Historian 770:

wrong. First, as an expansionist global phenomenon, Communism lasted between 1917 and the time of the completion of

4716: 1961: 870: 791: 312: 186: 37: 1851: 4834: 4711: 4696: 4415: 1426: 615:

10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power"

4800:

International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania

4459: 4333:

From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States

2152: 4944: 4386: 2371: 1875: 970: 783: 316: 218: 3066: 3061: 1652: 1620: 1588:

said: "Unlike the cardboard cutouts of Communist leadership presented in ideologically charged studies like

1444: 1124: 443: 288: 3676: 2639: 4939: 1863: 1746: 1491: 1291: 1281: 1182: 1039: 1035: 1027: 1000:

as a result of the famine caused by Stalin's regime 'is equal to' the starvation of a Jewish child in the

935:'s methods of mass extermination were adopted from Soviet methods. As an example, Courtois cites the Nazi 899: 766: 630: 168: 4448: 3972: 3408: 3028: 1811: 1286: 1219: 4500: 3945:Škof, Lenart (2012). "Two Recurrences of an Idea: On Political and Ethical Vicissitudes of Democracy". 2896: 403: 3231: 2345: 1236: 91: 4774: 4726: 3087: 2361: 1925: 1818: 1798: 1734: 1456: 1128: 419: 415: 342: 300: 276: 260: 145: 51: 1087:

Malia writes that by reducing politics and ideology to anthropology, it "assure us that contrary to

4667: 4655: 4645:

European Public Hearing on European Conscience and Crimes of Totalitarian Communism: 20 Years After

3709:

Lauber, Jack M. (2000). "Feature Review: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression".

3464:"A Tale of 'Two Totalitarianisms': The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism" 2597:

Dulić, Tomislav (2004). "Tito's Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis of Rummel's Work on Democide".

2357: 1947: 1771: 1632: 1512: 1462: 1366: 1348: 1202: 894: 746: 434:

The introduction, written by Courtois, was the main source of controversy, and was acknowledged by

272: 75: 4523: 4065:

Behr, Valentin; Blaive, Muriel; Constantin, Anenoma; Neumayer, Laure; Zombory, Máté (April 2020).

1152:

and "Vom schwierigen Umgang mit der Wahrnehmung" ("On the Difficulty of Handling Perceptions") by

1042:

votes to gain a parliamentary majority. While the non-Gaullist right cited the book to attack the

442:

or any other political system. Courtois says that "Communism, the defining characteristic of the '

4680:

European Parliament resolution on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe

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practice. When faced with this paradox, people generally preferred to bury their heads in sand."

946: 882: 821: 736: 522: 264: 86: 3579: 3091: 1938:

Rémi Kauffer, a specialist in the history of intelligence, terrorism and clandestine operations.

1346:

received praise in many publications in the United Kingdom and the United States, including the

889:

is not "about communism as an ideology or even about communism as a state-building phenomenon."

858: 833:

commented that Courtois' death toll estimate for Nazism "conveniently" excludes those killed in

4478: 3490: 4431: 4423: 4405: 4372: 4354: 4346: 4336: 4272: 4247: 4222: 4193: 4171: 4150: 4129: 4108: 3995: 3684: 3658: 3624: 3439: 3412: 3378: 3279: 3258: 3123: 3099: 2937: 2815: 2659: 2480: 2375: 2220: 2190: 2063: 2036: 1754: 1703: 1414: 1264: 966: 958: 332: 241: 96: 64: 4842: 4744: 4639: 4489: 4078: 4024: 3895: 3777: 3714: 3594: 3513: 3504: 3478: 3343: 3201: 3155: 3012: 2966: 2807: 2780: 2651: 2606: 2505: 2448: 2131: 2101: 1882: 1825: 1804: 1487: 1408: 1384: 1354: 1251: 1189: 1059: 1023: 850:, and other critics also denounced it as antisemitic, a charge Malia disagreed with. In the 754: 741: 637: 486: 461: 407: 3768:

Pekacz, Jolanta T. (2001). "Twentieth-Century Communism—The Rise and Fall of an Illusion".

2532:

Kuromiya, Hiroaki (January 2001). "Review Article: Communism and Terror. Reviewed Work(s):

1143:

The German edition contains an additional chapter on the Soviet-backed Communist regime in

984:

Courtois states that the Soviet crimes against peoples living in the Caucasus and of large

4769: 4531: 4507: 4463: 3963: 3565: 3459: 3398: 3053: 1636: 1495: 1420: 1402: 1378: 1360: 1149: 1055: 915: 904: 830: 373: 350: 280: 173: 140: 127: 80: 4244:

Le livre noir du colonialisme: XVIe-XXIe siècle : de l'extermination à la repentance

3967: 3011:(3). Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians: 1156. 2934:

French Writers and the Politics of Complicity: Crises of Democracy in the 1940s and 1990s

1538:, professor of history Shane J. Maddock wrote: "Since its publication in France in 1997, 335:

was originally slated to write the introduction, but he died before being able to do so.

1619:

as "a 1997 propaganda volume that suits a more recent China-bashing campaign, where the

626:

The murder of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922

4587: 4382: 4328: 4324: 3987: 2353: 2153:"Reviews: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stéphane Courtois" 1575: 1571: 1552:

genocide' of Communism in connection with the Ukrainian Great Famine of 1932–1933, the

1548: 1372: 1322: 1228: 942: 714: 662: 506: 498: 482: 478: 411: 369: 17: 4556: 4553:. Institute on Religion and Public Life (2): 56. Retrieved 14 January 2022 – via Gale. 4067:"An Anti-Communist Consensus: The Black Book of Communism in Pan-European Perspective" 4883: 4512: 4090: 3726: 3371: 3355: 3213: 3175: 2978: 2957:

Bartov, Omer (Spring 2002). "Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History".

2829: 2677: 2626: 2341: 2135: 1980: 1206: 1173: 1153: 1088: 1063: 1006: 1001: 909: 787: 750: 724: 703: 692: 680: 610: 494: 328: 268: 103: 69: 3482: 3992:

The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War

2803:

The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century

1941: 1593: 1545:

The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War

1475: 1144: 1031: 985: 932: 928: 834: 641: 598: 568: 474: 435: 381: 324: 320: 4299: 3900: 3883: 3334:(2001). "What Future for the Future? Reflections on the Black Book of Communism". 3159: 1718:

down into series of discrete movements, with mixed positive and negative results.

4369:

The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century

3916: 3553: 3433: 3117: 2801: 2655: 2365: 2122:

Suny, Ronald Grigor (2007). "Russian Terror/ism and Revisionist Historiography".

2057: 877:. Margolin, along with Werth, addressed this comparison in a response printed in 3331: 3057: 3032: 1727: 1517: 1479: 1438: 1260: 1214: 1075: 1043: 978: 954: 847: 826: 802: 655: 592: 580: 490: 466: 292: 619:

According to Courtois, the crimes by the Soviet Union included the following:

4850: 4790:

Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity

4721: 3718: 3347: 3205: 2811: 1777: 1723: 1165: 1132: 993: 862: 684: 510: 296: 4750:

Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism

3688: 2996: 2610: 2194: 4496:. Harvard University Press. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Internet Archive. 4364: 4082: 4015:

Burds, Jeffrey (April 2019). "The Cambridge History of Communism (Review)".

3233:

Distortion, negationism and minimization of the Holocaust in postwar Romania

2865: 2536:

by Stephane Courtois; Reflections on a Ravaged Century by Robert Conquest".

2105: 1869: 1715: 1656: 1628: 1624: 1467: 1272: 1080: 1047: 688: 673: 394: 162: 3598: 4351:

The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century

4044:"Did Over 100 Million People Die under Communism during the 20th Century?" 3831:. American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. 3402: 2970: 2784: 1478:

criticized the book and its reception as one-sided by outlining economist

4028: 3781: 2686: 866: 842: 816: 797: 586: 574: 399: 284: 154: 4105:

Du passé faisons table rase! Histoire et mémoire du communisme en Europe

3811: 3754: 3239:. International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. pp. 47, 59. 3230:

Friling, Tuvia; Ioanid, Radu; Ionescu, Mihail E.; Benjamin, Lya (2004).

3167: 2420: 1935:

Pascal Fontaine, a journalist with a special knowledge of Latin America.

1673:

Du passé faisons table rase! Histoire et mémoire du communisme en Europe

1231:

stated that the book's estimate of "at least 500,000" deaths during the

4296:"Renaud Escande (dir.), Le Livre Noir de la Révolution française, 2008" 3840: 3614:"War die Hungersnot in der Ukraine intendiert? (Submission in English)" 3315: 3024: 2618: 2585: 2460: 1971:

Jean-Louis Panné, a specialist on the international Communist movement.

1256: 604: 447: 4707:

Act on Illegality of the Communist Regime and on Resistance Against It

3884:"Anti-Communism and the Hundreds of Millions of Victims of Capitalism" 2800:

Tismăneanu, Vladimir (2012). "Utopian Radicalism and Dehumanization".

2549: 2517: 2059:

The Haunting Past: History, Memory, and Justice in Contemporary France

1022:

Malia mentions Courtois' argument that since Nuremberg jurisprudence (

927:

Courtois considers Communism and Nazism to be distinct yet comparable

4455: 3255:

Das Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus. Unterdrückung, Verbrechen und Terror

439: 355: 304: 158: 3016: 2452: 2407:

Paczkowski, Andrzej (Spring 2001). "The Storm over the Black Book".

1960:, the deputy director of the Institute for Political Studies of the 1944:, a historian and the author of the foreword to the English edition. 4628:

European Public Hearing on Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes

3877: 3875: 2806:(E-book ed.). University of California Press. pp. 18–52. 2650:. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice. pp. 111–129. 2509: 1243:

challenged the authors' thesis that the famine of 1933 was largely

4402:

Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians, and the Russian Revolution

1596:

article, Naphtali Khumalo said that the 100 million estimate from

997: 974: 962: 666: 648: 456: 4126:

Das Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus 2. Das schwere Erbe der Ideologie

2918:(2). Marxist Educational Press, University of Minnesota: 241–251. 521:, called themselves "Communists", and erected monuments to honor 3580:"The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines" 3373:

Aversion and Erasure: The Fate of the Victim After the Holocaust

1702:, a collective work of twenty academics, was a response to both 1686:

Das Schwarzbuch of Kommunismus 2. Das schwere Erbe der Ideologie

1675:

with the same imprint. The first edition included the subtitle "

1317:

Historian Jolanta Pekacz said that the "archival revelations of

423: 275:, and several other European academics documenting a history of 4560: 3621:

Roter Holocaust? : Kritik des Schwarzbuchs des Kommunismus

3096:

Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide

2439:

858 pp. Notes. Index. Photographs. Maps. $ 37.50, hard bound".

2185:[Divisions among the team of historians of Communism]. 1046:"for harboring allies with an unrepented 'criminal past'", the 846:

denounced the introduction, the main source of controversy, as

4805:

Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania

4335:(hardcover ed.). Intercollegiate Studies Institute hardcover. 4269:

Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus: ein Abgesang auf die Marktwirtschaft

2496:

Harff, Barbara (1996). "Death by Government by R. J. Rummel".

2476:

Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century

1876:

The Black Book of Capitalism: A farewell to the market economy

1263:'s murderous anti-urbanism under the same category. Historian 992:

and were not very much different from similar policies by the

4547:"The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression" 1954:

and a researcher at the Research Institute on Southeast Asia.

1671:

was followed by the publication in 2002 of a series entitled

4353:. Translated by Deborah Furet. University of Chicago Press. 623:

The execution of tens of thousands of hostages and prisoners

4551:

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life

4371:(illustrated, reprinted ed.). University of Chicago Press. 3970:[Communism: The Falsifuication of a "Black Book"]. 3304:

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression

2899:

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression

2534:

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression

977:' children to those of Jewish children who were put in the 937: 2640:"The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide" 829:, anthropologist and postsocialist gender studies scholar 3655:

Roter Holocaust'? Kritik des Schwarzbuchs des Kommunismus

3310:(110, Special Edition: Frontiers of Knowledge): 166–169. 2897:"Review Article: Communism and Terror. Reviewed Work(s): 1294:, whose work focuses on Eastern Europe, stated that "the 676:) and 2 million others during the famine of 1932 and 1933 4213:

Bordier, Roger; Frémion, Yves; Perrault, Gilles (2001).

3827:

by Stephane Courtois, Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer".

3300:

Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression

2092:

Aronson, Ronald (2003). "Communism's posthumous trial".

1139:

German edition: "The Processing of Socialism in the GDR"

309:

Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression

4634:

Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism

4542:(3) Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via History Cooperative. 4519:. Retrieved 18 August 2021 – via Faits & Documents. 3825: