The black Book of Communism

the black Book of Communism. Crimes, terror, repression (1997) is a work written by a collective of academics, published at Robert Laffont. Written to mark the eightieth birthday of the Russian Revolution of 1917, it intends to draw up an assessment of the victims of the “Communisme” (it is however specified in the book that it is acted in fact of speaking about the “modes claiming Marxisme-léninisme”).

Business success, translated into several languages, the book caused two violent polemics: the first among the authors about the introductory chapter (of which the contents more was médiatisé than the remainder of the work), the second more largely relating to the whole of the work.

The authors are Stephan Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin and Andrzej Paczkowski. Also collaborated Remi Kauffer, Pierre Rigoulot, Pascal Fontaine, Yves Santamaria and Sylvain Boulouque.

The book describes on 840 pages the crimes committed by the States whose leaders asserted Communisme: Leninist states or “Marxist-Leninists”. The principal parts relate to the the USSR under Lénine then Stalin, and the China under Mao Zedong. More precisely, the facts described in the book include:

the USSR:

the Gulag S, camps of forced labor, mainly of 1930 to 1953.
the great famine of 1932-1933.
the arrest of anti-Stalinist Communists (including nonRussian), the assassination of thousands of them as from 1934 (mainly in the USSR but also abroad).
“Great purgings” of 1936-1938.
the invasion of Poland during the application of the Pact germano-Soviet (1939-1941).
forced displacements of populations.
In particular, the study of the Soviet system seeks to show the existence of a continuity in the policies of oppression of the governments resulting from the revolution of October 1917 throughout the history of the USSR, by confirming that the process of terror was set up in Russia shortly after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, with the creation of the Tchéka, the progressive prohibition of the newspapers of opposition, the arrest and execution noble the, middle-class one, Menchevik S, SR of left, Anarchiste S and peasants, the brutal repression of the working strikes, or revolts (Kronstadt). The author of this part of the black Book , Nicolas Werth, specifies that it “does not claim to present revelations on the exercise of the violence of State in the USSR” which “already was, for a long time, explored by the historians”.

Eastern Europe: Political lawsuits (for example the Lawsuit Slansky), camps of forced labor (mainly of 1948 to 1956), the repression of popular demonstrations: in GDR in June 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968.

China:

the famine without precedent of 1959-1961, consequence of the failure of the “Large step ahead”.
the Laogai S, camps of forced labor, mainly of 1954 to 1978.
the “Cultural revolution”, described as being a “ civil war, open or larval ”.
occupation of the Tibet.

North Korea: The repressions exerted by the dictatorial mode of the “democratic Popular republic of Korea”, since its installation in 1948.

Kampuchea: Deportation, then the elimination of most of the urban population by the mode of the Khmer Rouge, with the capacity of 1975 to 1979.

Cuba: Imprisonments and death sentences since the takeover by Fidel Castro in 1959.

Afghanistan: The military intervention of the USSR of 1979 to 1989.

Stephan Courtois devoted himself to an accounting of the number of deaths. He affirms that “E total approaches the bar of the hundred million deaths. ” The figures used and the principle even of addition of causes of dead sometimes very different was prone of a polemic.

Dissensions between authors

Half of the authors - Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin and Karel Bartosek - protested publicly against the introductory chapter of Stephan Courtois, they refuse there its bringing together of the Génocide Nazi and of Stalinist repression, as well as the calculation of the number of victims, of which they dispute at the same time opportunity and the figures used, which for some are their figures but increased without reason by Courtois.

In an article of the World dated November 14th, 1997, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin list the principal points blamed of the introductory chapter:

“centrality of the crime of mass in the repressive practices of Communisms to the capacity; assimilation between communist doctrines and application of this one, which makes go up the crime to the heart even of the communist ideology; the assertion which results from this from the great similarity of the Nazism and Communism, both intrinsically criminal in their base even; a figuring of the victims of abusive Communism, not clarified (85 million? 95? 100?), not justified, and formally contradicting the results of the joint authors on the USSR, Asia and Eastern Europe (their studies, one can draw a total “fork” going from 65 to 93 million; the average 79 million has value only purely indicative). ”

They add: “One would seek however in vain, in the introductory chapter as in the remainder of the work, the tight and thorough discussion which would require of as complex and delicate questions as the comparison between Fascism and Communism, or the presence of terrorist potentialities in the Marxist theory itself. We do not intend to disqualify these essential questionings. But, quite simply, our book does not carry on top. ”

Nicolas Werth estimates that: “the crime is certainly an essential component Communism, but the lie which allowed the screening of terror appears more central me than the crime itself. ” Jean-Louis Margolin goes in the same direction: “That of Courteous Stephan come down to remove her historical character with the phenomenon. Even if the communist compost can lead to the crimes of mass, the bond between doctrines and practical is not obvious, as opposed to what known as Stephan Courtois”. Werth and Margolin reproach Courtois sound “obsession to arrive at the hundred million deaths”. NR. Werth thus deducts fifteen million victims in the USSR, whereas Stephan Courtois, in her introduction, speaks about twenty million; J. - L. Margolin explains “why it forever made state of a million died in Vietnam”, as opposed to what written Courtois.

Authors threaten of continuation the editor before the exit of the work. Jean-Louis Margolin obtains the change of the title, which was to be the Book of the communist crimes , and the addition of the subtitle.

Karel Bartosek and Nicolas Werth resign of the review Communisme rested by Stephan Courtois, Bartosek known as to protest not against the book but to absolutely refuse “any ideological and political approach of these sufferings”.

S. Courteous answers that “it is a team entirely of left and who, because it is of left, raises questions. ”

Discusses on the work

Crimes of “Communism”?

A certain number of critics of the black Livre consider that this one employs the vague term of “Communism” to refer to a large variety of systems: “tallies reducing” according to Alain Blum, “approach ideological” according to Marc Ferro. In addition, it is not proven that the modes mentioned in the book were communist. It is not an novel idea: the question of knowing if the States concerned really went towards Communism is open since their appearance. Stephan Courtois proposes, to justify the title, a definition of a “communist State” as “a State controlled by only one party which proclaims openly inspiration Marxist-Leninist”.

The editor Maurice Nadeau, in the literary Fortnight , regarded the book as “a swindle”: “the swindle resides in what this collective of authors calls " communisme" what is precisely the opposite”. “Where thus they made their classes these " historiens" ? For some, hold, pardi! in Stalin precisely”. “Our " historians and universitaires" are obstinated to call " communisme" what in good French language and honest knowledge of the History is called " Stalinism " , for the Chinese " Maoism " , for Kampuchean the " Khmer Rouge ". When one makes the publicity of a book on million corpses there is not the right to exploit the words”.

The journalist Gilles Perrault, in diplomatic Le Monde , specified the fact that the local history and traditions played, in each case, a big role, and that the book gathers too different historical phenomena to be object of a single judgment: “By which aberration can one include in the same judgment of the Nicaraguan Sandinistes which gave democratically concerned their capacity and the insane furious ones of the luminous Path? ”. He regrets that the book does not discuss the role of the the United States whose obstruction is according to him causes failure of several communist experiments. It also reproaches to the authors of the black Livre for having occulted the importance of the counter-revolution like factor of explanation of the process of toughening of terror in the communist systems: “Large absent: the adversary. Each communist experiment is described as if it were held in isolation, crossed outside world. Why Nicolas Werth does he abstain from evoking keen foreign interventionism to suppress the young revolution Bolshevik? ”.

This last criticism partly joined that of Daniel Bensaïd, according to which “the polemical objective of the black Book consists in establishing a strict continuity between Lénine and Stalin. According to the authors of the black Book, the civil war would have been liked by the Bolsheviks and the terror installation as from the summer 1918 would be the original matrix of all the crimes committed since in the name of Communism. The real history, made conflicts, fights, uncertainties, victories and defeats, is irreducible with this dark legend of the self-development of the concept, where the idea would generate the world”.

Alain Blum who qualifies the book of “negation of the History”, Nicolas Werth answers: “Does not exist there indeed a common compost, an hard core consisted founded practical policies, in all the countries which claimed Communism, on the broad ones and terrible repressive sequences, even, at certain moments, massively criminal, on the exclusion of whole social categories, " a culture of war civile" , on the central idea of the " exacerbation of the fight of the classes" as one progresses towards the ideal goal, on a certain number of myths modernisateurs carrying an extreme violence against " an old man monde" to cut down (including in Kampuchea of Pol Pot that Alain Blum opposes wrongly, on this last point, in China)? ” It concluded from it that “these similarities suggest that the " object; system communiste" is quite other thing that a simple ideological category. ”

The comparison enters the Nazism and Communism

In its introduction to the black Book , Stephan Courtois establishes a comparison between Nazism and Communism, part of the crimes of the second being comparable to a “genocide of class” equivalent to the “genocide of race”. According to Courteous Stephan, “the death of hunger of a child of Ukrainian kulak deliberately driven back with the famine by the Stalinist mode " vaut" the death of hunger of a Jewish child of the ghetto of Warsaw. ” In addition to part of the authors of the black Book (see higher), this comparison between the Nazism and Communism was criticized much.

For the historian Jean-Jacques Becker, the calculation “of died of Communism” has a “null historical value”, since they are very different realities which escape any form from accountancy. In fact, the comparison with the Nazism, which is reduced to a statistical dimension, is “illegitimate”. Even if such were not the intention of Stephan Courtois, that resulted in undervaluing the phenomenon Nazi, because, on arrival, “the extermination of six million Jews makes pale figure beside the " hundred million victimes" Communism”. Lastly, Stephan Courtois “definitively left the field of the history” when he condemns the historians to have failed owe them moral by not emphasizing the crimes of Communism, which is false according to Jean-Jacques Becker.

For the historian of Russia Jean-Louis Van Regemorter: “Aren't These simplistic amalgams likely to move away the historian from his traditional deontology which consists in analyzing and to include/understand? ”

The historian trotskist Jean-Jacques Marie denounced the fact that this comparison rests on a false quotation of Stalin: “On page 19 of the black Book of Communism , Stephan Courtois written “the official word of Stalin was to exterminate the kulaks as a class. ” Stephan Courtois replaces “to liquidate” by “exterminating” and is based on this quotation modified to affirm: here “the genocide of " classe" joined the genocide of " race". ” Thus “Communism” by interposed Stalin and the Nazism are twin since one tries to exterminate a social layer and the other a race. It is annoying that to support this assertion Stephan Courtois starts by adulterating the formula of Stalin. The quotation marks and the “official” word change nothing there. ”

Annie Lacroix-Rice, historian close to the Stalinist mediums, qualified the work of “political and ideological operation of great scale, on the scale both of France and of unified Europe. This leading operation gave the decisive dash to the assimilation between Nazism and Communism which populates the school handbooks today. ”

Stephan Courtois rejects the idea highly that it would assimilate Nazism and Communism, charge made according to him to discredit any comparative approach. He retorts with his detractors that “Vis-a-vis the black Book, many Communists admit from now on that real Communism was " monstrueux" , even murderer in mass, but they support that the ideal would be except and free from any responsibility in the tragedy. ” It quotes Jacques Julliard: “See the last Marxists of this country to take refuge in a morals of the intention will remain, for which likes to laugh, one of the funs of this end of century. ”

Courteous continues: “it was not in our intention to examine in what the Marxist theory could, as such, to have had a role in the crimes of Communism at the 20th century. This question is however legitimate. Thus, in 1872, Bakounine denounced the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat like the institution d'" a post of chief engineer of the revolution mondiale" , which would lead ineluctably to the control of the masses. ” It distinguishes then Communism and Marxism with the profit from the second:

“Besides, many Marxists of the end of the 19th century and IIe International, all impregnated of democratic culture and respect for human dignity, were among the first to denounce with force the experiment léninienne. In Tours in 1920, addressing to his socialist comrades who were going to found PCF, Leon Blum analyzed " the doctrinal" unit; proposed by the International Communist: " Your dictatorship is not any more the temporary dictatorship. (…) It is a system of stable government, almost regular in your spirit. (…) It is in your thought a system of government created once for all. (…) You conceive terrorism like means of gouvernement." It thus seems to us abusive to compare the communist ideology to the Marxist ideology, number of Marxists among most eminent having fought the Communism of Lénine. (...) The communist ideology, Lénine defined it. These doctrines, codified soon in " Marxism-léninisme" by Stalin, is doctrines of elimination of the " bourgeoisie" (then other social classes, initially of the fractions of the farming community), of dictatorship of the proletariat (become in fact dictatorship on the proletariat), of permanent civil war, aggression and expansion by the weapons of the Soviet system. ”

Reception

The book exceeds immediately its sales goals (only 19.000 initial specimens). Three years after its sale, it is diffused with 700 000 specimens and is translated into 16 languages.

In France and, to a lesser extent, in Germany and Italy, the book was sometimes judged severely, causing very animated debates. On the other hand, the black Livre was received more favorably in the ex-Countries of the East, causing many debates, translations and pushing even historians to propose complements (GDR, Romania, Baltic States…). These complements were collected in Of the Past, make clean slate (Robert Laffont, 2002), work prolonging the initial book. In the foreword, Courteous Stephan reconsider lengthily the polemics caused in France by the publication of the black Book .

According to the World Socialist Web site (structure trotskist), the book “throws arbitrarily together historical phenomena completion different such as the civil war from 1918-21, obligatory collectivization and Great Terror in Soviet Union, the reign of Mao in China and Pol Pot in Kampuchea, the military government of Ethiopia as well as of various Latin-American political movements, of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua with the luminous Sentier of Peru. ”

the black Book of capitalism , published by the Time of Cherries in 1998, tries to bring a counterpart to the book.

the Century of Communisms , published by the Éditions of the Workshop in 2000, is a historical work which leaves the idea that “Communism is a reality differently more complex. The hour came from distanciées and more lucid interpretations. ” Indeed, according to Bernard Pudal, “the black Livre of Communism tends to give an impoverished image of Communism, reduced to the one of dimensions of its history. This image corresponds neither to reality nor with the state of knowledge. It appeared necessary to offer a work of synthesis intended for an audience much larger than that of the specialists. The plural of the title the Century of Communisms suggests the refusal of a vision monocausale and the intention associating the multiple facets of the history of Communism. ”