The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression

by Nicolas Werth, Stéphane Courtois, Jean-Louis Panné, et al.

Book Overview

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:... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674076087
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 858 Pages
• Weight: 3.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.3" x 2.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Estimations may vary, but a rape is a rape

Many people who do not like this book attacked that the statistics or estimations are inflated. Take Cambodia as an example. I visited S21 a few years ago. Some said 2 millions were killed by Pol Pot, sme said 1.7 millions. Some Chinese scholars estimated that 80 millions died of non-natural causes under Mao's rule; 50 millions were killed or oppressed to death during the Cultural Revolution alone. But some people dispute these figures. Let's say we give the preceding estimations a 90% "discount" : Only 20 thousands (= 2 millions X 10%) were massacred by Pol Pot and only 8 millions (80 millions X 10%) by Mao. But, these "discounted" figures are still horrible! The only way to explain "away" these crimes is to argue that anti-right movement, Great leap forward, cultural revolution, Gulag, S21... and many others never happen. If a girl was raped by a gang, it doesn't matter whether she was raped 5 times or 50 times. The only way to dismiss the case is to say that the girl is a liar. But, I am not a lair. And many Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians... who experienced the suffering are not liars. Unlike some anti-Capitalist or anti-American critics who are enjoying luxary and freedom in the Capitalist America, those people who speak the truth spent many years in jail or lost virtually everything, including their home. I keep remembering in 1989 right after June 4, my parents told me not to come home... Please don't just focus on quantitative methodology (numbers). Numbers alone cannot tell the whole story.

Absolutely necessary

This book could have been a lot longer. It could not have been any shorter, though: it takes a brick of a book to really provide the crushing scope of this murderous ideology, and the authors have slowly, methodically, relentlessly added example after example to put in display, naked, a monster that killed tens of millions in the 20th Century and that will continue to kill (one hopes in a far smaller scale) in the 21st until it wastes itself out and vanishes. Communism became religion and state and proceeded to murder away as if the body count meant better chances of achieving that utopian society it pretended to aim at. We now know the absolute disasters that all Communist societies were -and are-, but this book is necessary as a ready reference work on evil that should be next to to William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Communism has managed to kill more than 100 million people, and this estimate is actually quite conservative: Solzhenitsyn puts the figure at 60 million in the former Soviet Union alone; Roy Medvedev opts for 40 million dead just under Stalin, not counting those who died because of World War II. Nobody really knows how many millions were murdered by Mao. Many historians and writers had told us parts of this sad tale: Milovan Djilas, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Robert Conquest, W.S. Kuniczak, Aino Kuusinen, Armando Valladares, Roy Medvedev, Dmitri Volkogonov, and others, so many, indeed, that a complete list would require several pages. But the authors of "The Black Book of Communism" do what none of the other authors had done before: they provide us with a total view of malignity, proving that, from Russia to Korea, from China to Cuba, from Africa to Europe, Communism was, indeed, a cancer. An excellent and necessary work.

Important

Liberal elites should read this book. Johnny Depp (millionaire) was recently on the cover of "Premiere" magazine wearing a Che Guevara (Castro's communist partner) medallion. This book points out that, when a 13 year old boy in Che Guevara's army ate some food he was not supposed to, Che Guevara had him killed. There is obviously a big gap between the Johnny-Depp-types' perception of communism, and the reality of communism. This book shows you the reality.

The "Workers' Paradise" exploded.

As a Russian language student who spent two years working and studying in the former Soviet Union just before its collapse, I heard a good number of grisly accounts from working class Soviet citizens detailing the horrors that their government had inflicted upon them and their parents, including torture, imprisonment, execution, and even commitment to madhouses for such "diseases" as believing in God. Nevertheless, coming from an American educational establishment that had for decades treated Communism with kid gloves, I couldn't help but wonder if my Soviet friends had been exaggerating a little bit. Now, ten years later, this amazing book demonstrates just how abominable Communism really was, just how brutal, just how rapacious, and just how WRONG, the delusions of its comfortable Western apologists notwithstanding.

Important

Anyone who harbors delusions that communism/socialism, if only applied correctly, would solve all ills, should read this book. In every instance communism/socialism results in the gulag and extermination camps. I heard Kurt Vonnegut speak at U.C. Irvine a few years ago, and he said, "communism is a good system, it just happens that in the Soviet Union, the system was run by a bunch of crooks." Vonnegut--whose books are published by a capitalist conglomerate--is a first-rate novelist, but I hope he reads this book, and gets it through his head that the communist SYSTEM ITSELF is what is rotten. This book wears on the soul after a bit, because SO MUCH death and torture and incarcertation resulted in all communist systems. But one should feel a bit worn down when reading this book, because it means you are feeling the impact of what millions upon millions have suffered.