The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression

by Jean-Louis Panné (Author), Andrzej Paczkowski (Author), Karel Bartosek (Author),

151 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0674076082

ISBN-10: 0674076087

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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.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

From Publishers Weekly

In France, this damning reckoning of communism's worldwide legacy was a bestseller that sparked passionate arguments among intellectuals of the Left. Essentially a body count of communism's victims in the 20th century, the book draws heavily from recently opened Soviet archives. The verdict: communism was responsible for between 85 million and 100 million deaths in the century. In France, both sales and controversy were fueled, as Martin Malia notes in the foreword, by editor Courtois's specific comparison of communism's "class genocide" with Nazism's "race genocide." Courtois, the director of research at the prestigious Centre Research National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and editor of the journal Communisme, along with the other distinguished French and European contributors, delivers a fact-based, mostly Russia-centered wallop that will be hard to refute: town burnings, mass deportations, property seizures, family separations, mass murders, planned faminesAall chillingly documented from conception to implementation. The book is divided into five sections. The first and largest takes readers from the "Paradoxes of the October Revolution" through "Apogee and Crisis in the Gulag System" to "The Exit from Stalinism." Seeing the U.S.S.R. as "the cradle of all modern Communism," the book's other four sections document the horrors of the Iron Curtain countries, Soviet-backed agitation in Asia and the Americas, and the Third World's often violent embrace of the system. A conclusionA"Why?"Aby Courtois, points to a bureaucratic, "purely abstract vision of death, massacre and human catastrophe" rooted in Lenin's compulsion to effect ideals by any means necessary. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 858 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 15, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674076087
ISBN-13: 978-0674076082
Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 2 x 10.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 151 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #107,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #51 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Political Science > Political Ideologies
- #69 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Political Science > Political History
- #117 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Communism & Socialism

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Edmund Pickett

Incompetently scanned ebook version of a classic. Don't Buy!!

September 28, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I would give this book 5 stars in a paper edition, as it is a classic historical work. This ebook version however was very incompetently scanned and digitized. On every page there are bogus characters and typos, missing words, etc. It is often difficult to decipher the meaning of a sentence. Please don't buy this version. It will only encourage the rip off artists who put this on Amazon. There is another version by Harvard University Press but they have withdrawn it from Amazon because of formatting errors. That leaves only expensive used paper copies, but please don't buy this version.

21 people found this helpful

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LakeFisherman

Excellent work

September 5, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

You can actually buy the Kindle edition here. Comprehensive examination of the crimes of Communism. Written by a group of French Scholars. This book is a must read and discusses many scholarly issues regarding the nature of totalitarianism, Communism and Fascism. But is also presents many facts and historical events regarding communism. So many people in our country are ignorant of these things and they need to be informed so we don't buy into the propaganda and repeat the mistakes of the past. I found the book to be readable. Not the easiest book to read. But I have had textbooks that were much more difficult to read that this was.

7 people found this helpful

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Flynn

A MUST READ

December 7, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Reads like a textbook. Takes a while to complete, but well worth it. A must read for all who are curious as to why people accept and embrace communism. A fantastic history lesson of the atrocities perpetrated by communist regimes. Should be required reading at all colleges & universities.

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Thufir

It seems that the anointed and noble Communists commit murder in the name of ridding the world of war and poverty whilst killers

October 29, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This book is so well written that I reread it two more times and the Introduction and Conclusion another five. If you only read the introduction and conclusion, it would be well worth the price.

The author has an interesting perspective on the question of whether or not the terror of Communism can be compared to that of Nazism. Apparently, the very idea of comparing the two is taboo in genteel society. It seems that the anointed and noble Communists commit murder in the name of ridding the world of war and poverty whilst killers of boorish and ignoble stripe are vile and evil simply because they are at least dumb enough to make no such pretensions. He poses the question this way: Is it right to excuse terror when performed under the color of abolishing war and poverty, or is the excusing wrong precisely because the terror is perpetrated in the name of abolishing war and poverty.

I believe it was in the book "Witness" by Whitaker Chambers where this same question is presented comparing the noble terror of Communism with that of boorish Nazism. Chambers, when talking with other former communists, to test the veracity of their break with the faith, he would ask, "What is Communism"? If they answered, "Communism is Fascism". Then he knew that this person has truly broken with the religion.

It seems many are attracted to collectivist ideologies because these political cults claim to hold the secret to ending the two great scourges of poverty and war. To achieve his noble goal the true believer can then justify any means necessary, even if it produces famine and war far beyond anything that has gone before. The goal is so noble that no amount of other people’s blood and suffering can cause the true believer to question a single tenant of the faith.

It seems mankind has always been plagued by these murder cults but none has had such noble ideals, which may explain why the holy men of Communism have been able to get away with racking up a body count of such scale with little or no complaint or even complacency and collaboration from those on the outside. Outsiders who also believe in the eradication of poverty and war may feel compelled to give these monsters a pass because of their shared and noble goals.

27 people found this helpful

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Bookman73

Solid Fact Book

November 3, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Solid book with ample amount of evidence referenced. Every individual who wants to learn about the dark truths about communism should read.

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

October 17, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Slow read, but in depth and jaw dropping.

9 people found this helpful

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Marcos Vinicius Rodrigues

The real truth abou communism

April 25, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Great book and extremely revealing. I can not find it in the country where I live (Brazil) because it is secretly forbidden, since we live with a communist party in power, although they have not yet managed to establish a communist regime. They are slowly trying to, though.

18 people found this helpful

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bombshelterbob

Too importasnt to pass by...

July 13, 2018

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Dark, disturbing, and frightening, however, it is a book you need to read to fully understand that the greatest negative of Communism is the repression and homicide that inevitably attends it. This is a book that had to be written...and had to be read.

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