Communism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Excess mortality in Communist states === {{further|Mass killings under communist regimes|Crimes against humanity under communist regimes}} Many authors have written about excess deaths under Communist states and [[mortality rate]]s,{{refn|group=note|name=third}} such as [[excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin]].{{refn|group=note|name=fourth}} Some authors posit that there is a Communist death toll, whose death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them, ranging from lows of 10–20 million to highs over 100 million. The higher estimates have been criticized by several scholars as ideologically motivated and inflated; they are also criticized for being inaccurate due to incomplete data, inflated by counting any excess death, making an unwarranted link to communism, and the grouping and body-counting itself. Higher estimates account for actions that Communist governments committed against civilians, including executions, human-made famines, and deaths that occurred during, or resulted from, imprisonment, and forced deportations and labor. Higher estimates are criticized for being based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable, and for being skewed to higher possible values.<ref name="ReferenceB">{{harvp|Harff|1996}}; {{harvp|Hiroaki|2001}}; {{harvp|Paczkowski|2001}}; {{harvp|Weiner|2002}}; {{harvp|Dulić|2004}}; {{harvp|Harff|2017}}</ref> Others have argued that, while certain estimates may not be accurate, "quibbling about numbers is unseemly. What matters is that many, many people were killed by communist regimes."{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} Historian Mark Bradley wrote that while the exact numbers have been in dispute, the [[order of magnitude]] is not.{{sfn|Bradley|2017|pp=151–153}} There is no consensus among [[genocide scholars]] and [[scholars of Communism]] about whether some or all the events constituted a [[genocide]] or [[mass killing]].{{refn|Most genocide scholars do not lump Communist states together, and do not treat genocidical events as a separate subjects, or by regime-type, and compare them to genocidical events which happened under vastly different [[regime]]s. Examples include ''Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts'',<ref>{{cite book |last1=Charny |first1=Israel W. |author1-link=Israel Charny |last2=Parsons |first2=William S. |last3=Totten |first3=Samuel |author3-link=Samuel Totten |year=2004 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Ef8Hrx8Cd0C |title=Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts |publisher=[[Psychology Press]] |isbn=978-0-415-94430-4 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> ''The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing'',<ref>{{cite book |last=Mann |first=Michael |year=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cGHGPgj1_tIC |title=The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-53854-1 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> ''Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide'',<ref>{{cite book |last=Sémelin |first=Jacques |author-link=Jacques Sémelin |year=2007 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HIS-AwAAQBAJ |title=Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=978-0-231-14282-3 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> ''Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue'',<ref>{{cite book |last1=Andrieu |first1=Claire |last2=Gensburger |first2=Sarah |last3=Sémelin |first3=Jacques |author3-link=Jacques Sémelin |year=2011 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=61HEQ2Y9iQ8C |title=Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=978-0-231-80046-4 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> and ''Final Solutions''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Valentino |first=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin Valentino |year=2013 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qqedDgAAQBAJ |title=Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |isbn=978-0-8014-6717-2 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> Several of them are limited to the geographical locations of "the Big Three", or mainly the [[Cambodian genocide]], whose culprit, the [[Khmer Rouge]] regime, was described by genocide scholar [[Helen Fein]] as following a [[xenophobic]] ideology bearing a stronger resemblance to "an almost forgotten phenomenon of national socialism", or [[fascism]], rather than communism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Fein |first=Helen |author-link=Helen Fein |year=1993 |chapter=Soviet and Communist Genocides and 'Democide' |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n4TaAAAAMAAJ |title=Genocide: A Sociological Perspective; Contextual and Comparative Studies I: Ideological Genocides |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |isbn=978-0-8039-8829-3 |access-date=13 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> while historian [[Ben Kiernan]] described it as "more racist and generically totalitarian than Marxist or specifically Communist",<ref>{{cite journal |last=Heder |first=Steve |date=July 1997 |title=Racism, Marxism, Labelling, and Genocide in Ben Kiernan's 'The Pol Pot Regime' |journal=South East Asia |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=101–153 |doi=10.1177/0967828X9700500202 |jstor=23746851}}</ref> or do not discuss Communist states, other than passing mentions. Such work is mainly done in an attempt to prevent [[genocide]]s but has been described by scholars as a failure.{{r|Weiss-Wendt 2008}}|group=note}} Among genocide scholars, there is no consensus on a common terminology,<ref name="Weiss-Wendt 2008">{{cite book |last=Weiss-Wendt |first=Anton |date=2008 |chapter=Problems in Comparative Genocide Scholarship |editor-last=Stone |editor-first=Dan |title=The Historiography of Genocide |location=London |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |pages=42–70 |doi=10.1057/9780230297784_3 |isbn=978-0-230-29778-4 |quote=There is barely any other field of study that enjoys so little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe. Considering that scholars have always put stress on prevention of genocide, comparative genocide studies have been a failure. Paradoxically, nobody has attempted so far to assess the field of comparative genocide studies as a whole. This is one of the reasons why those who define themselves as genocide scholars have not been able to detect the situation of crisis.}}</ref> and the events have been variously referred to as ''excess mortality'' or ''mass deaths''; other terms used to define some of such killings include ''[[classicide]]'', ''[[crimes against humanity]]'', ''[[democide]]'', ''genocide'', ''[[politicide]]'', ''[[Holocaust (disambiguation)|holocaust]]'', ''mass killing'', and ''[[Political repression|repression]]''.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008">{{harvnb|Karlsson|Schoenhals|2008}}</ref>{{refn|Genocide scholar [[Barbara Harff]] maintains a global database on mass killings, which is intended mostly for statistical analysis of mass killings in attempt to identify the best predictors for their onset and data is not necessarily the most accurate for a given country, since some sources are general genocide scholars and not experts on local history;{{sfn|Harff|2017}} it includes [[anticommunist mass killings]], such as the [[Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966]] (genocide and politicide), and some events which happened under Communist states, such as the [[1959 Tibetan uprising]] (genocide and politicide), the [[Cambodian genocide]] (genocide and politicide), and the [[Cultural Revolution]] (politicide), but no comparative analysis or communist link is drawn, other than the events just happened to take place in some Communist states in Eastern Asia. The Harff database is the most frequently used by genocide scholars.{{r|Tago & Wayman 2010}} [[Rudolph Rummel]] operated a similar database, but it was not limited to Communist states, it is mainly for statistical analysis, and in a comparative analysis has been criticized by other scholars,<ref>{{harvnb|Harff|1996}}; {{harvnb|Kuromiya|2001}}; {{harvnb|Paczkowski|2001}}; {{harvnb|Weiner|2002}}; {{harvnb|Dulić|2004}}; {{harvnb|Karlsson|Schoenhals|2008|pp=35, 79|ps=: "While Jerry Hough suggested Stalin's terror claimed tens of thousands of victims, R.J. Rummel puts the death toll of Soviet communist terror between 1917 and 1987 at 61,911,000. In both cases, these figures are based on an ideological preunderstanding and speculative and sweeping calculations. On the other hand, the considerably lower figures in terms of numbers of Gulag prisoners presented by Russian researchers during the glasnost period have been relatively widely accepted. ... It could, quite rightly, be claimed that the opinions that Rummel presents here (they are hardly an example of a serious and empirically-based writing of history) do not deserve to be mentioned in a research review, but they are still perhaps worth bringing up on the basis of the interest in him in the blogosphere."}}</ref> over that of Harff,{{sfn|Harff|2017}} for his estimates and statistical methodology, which showed some flaws.{{sfn|Dulić|2004}}|group=note}} These scholars state that most Communist states did not engage in mass killings;<ref>{{cite book |last1=Valentino |first1=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin Valentino |date=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC |title=Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century |location=Ithaca |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |pages=91 |isbn=978-0-801-47273-2 |quote=Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing.}}</ref>{{refn|In their criticism of ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'', which popularized the topic, several scholars have questioned, in the words of [[Alexander Dallin]], "[w]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."<ref name="Dallin 2000">{{cite journal |last=Dallin |first=Alexander |date=Winter 2000 |title=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, 858 pp. Notes. Index. Photographs. Maps. $37.50, hard bound. |journal=[[Slavic Review]] |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=59 |issue=4 |pages=882–883 |doi=10.2307/2697429 |jstor=2697429}}</ref> In particular, historians Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermann stated that a connection between the events in [[Joseph Stalin]]'s Soviet Union and [[Pol Pot]]'s Cambodia are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the [[Khmer Rouge]]'s murderous anti-urbanism under the same category.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Mecklenburg |editor-first1=Jens |editor-last2=Wippermann |editor-first2=Wolfgang |date=1998 |title='Roter Holocaust'? Kritik des Schwarzbuchs des Kommunismus |trans-title=A 'Red Holocaust'? A Critique of the Black Book of Communism |location=Hamburg |publisher=Konkret Verlag Literatur |language=de |isbn=3-89458-169-7}}</ref> Historian Michael David-Fox criticized the figures as well as the idea to combine loosely connected events under a single category of Communist death toll, blaming [[Stéphane Courtois]] for their manipulation and deliberate inflation which are presented to advocate the idea that communism was a greater evil than Nazism. 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.<ref name="David-Fox 2004">{{cite journal |last=David-Fox |first=Michael |date=Winter 2004 |title=On the Primacy of Ideology: Soviet Revisionists and Holocaust Deniers (In Response to Martin Malia) |journal=[[Kritika (journal)|Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History]] |volume=5 |number=1 |pages=81–105 |doi=10.1353/kri.2004.0007 |s2cid=159716738}}</ref> A similar criticism was made by ''[[Le Monde]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Malia |first=Martin |date=October 1999 |chapter=Preface |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H1jsgYCoRioC |title=The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |page=xiv |isbn=978-0-674-07608-2 |access-date=12 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]] |quote=... commentators in the liberal ''Le Monde'' argue 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 Communism is really only anticolonial nationalism. ... conflating sociologically diverse movements is merely a stratagem to obtain a higher body count against Communism, and thus against all the left.}}</ref> Allegation of a communist or red Holocaust is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hackmann |first=Jörg |date=March 2009 |title=From National Victims to Transnational Bystanders? The Changing Commemoration of World War II in Central and Eastern Europe |journal=[[Constellations (journal)|Constellations]] |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=167–181 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8675.2009.00526.x}}</ref> and is considered a form of softcore antisemitism and Holocaust trivialization.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Heni |first=Clemens |date=Fall 2008 |title=Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah |journal=[[Jewish Political Studies Review]] |location=Jerusalem |volume=20 |issue=3/4 |pages=73–92 |jstor=25834800}}</ref>|group=note}} [[Benjamin Valentino]] proposes the category of [[Communist mass killing]], alongside colonial, counter-guerrilla, and ethnic mass killing, as a subtype of dispossessive mass killing to distinguish it from coercive mass killing.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Valentino |first1=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin Valentino |date=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC |title=Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century |location=Ithaca |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |pages=66 |isbn=978-0-801-47273-2 |quote=I contend mass killing occurs when powerful groups come to believe it is the best available means to accomplish certain radical goals, counter specific types of threats, or solve difficult military problem.}}</ref> Genocide scholars do not consider ideology,<ref name="Tago & Wayman 2010">{{cite journal |last1=Atsushi |first1=Tago |last2=Wayman |first2=Frank W. |title=Explaining the onset of mass killing, 1949–87 |journal=[[Journal of Peace Research]] |volume=47 |issue=1 |pages=3–13 |date=2010 |doi=10.1177/0022343309342944 |issn=0022-3433 |jstor=25654524 |s2cid=145155872}}</ref> or regime-type, as an important factor that explains mass killings.<ref name="Straus 2007">{{cite journal |last=Straus |first=Scott |date=April 2007 |title=Review: Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide |journal=[[World Politics]] |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=59 |issue=3 |pages=476–501 |doi=10.1017/S004388710002089X |jstor=40060166 |s2cid=144879341}}</ref> Some authors, such as [[John Gray (philosopher)|John Gray]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gray |first=John |title=Totalitarianism at the crossroads |publisher=Social Philosophy & Policy Center |others=Ellen Frankel Paul |year=1990 |isbn=0-88738-351-3 |location=[Bowling Green, OH] |pages=116 |oclc=20996281}}</ref> [[Daniel Goldhagen]],{{sfn|Goldhagen|2009|p=206}} and [[Richard Pipes]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pipes |first=Richard |title=Communism: a history |date=2001 |publisher=Modern Library |isbn=0-679-64050-9 |edition= |location=New York |pages=147 |oclc=47924025}}</ref> consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings. Some connect killings in [[Joseph Stalin]]'s Soviet Union, [[Mao Zedong]]'s China, and [[Pol Pot]]'s Cambodia on the basis that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot; in all cases, scholars say killings were carried out as part of a policy of an unbalanced modernization process of rapid industrialization.{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}}{{refn|The Cambodia case is particular because it is different from the emphasis Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China gave to [[heavy industry]]. The goal of Khmer Rouge's leaders goal was to introduce communism in an extremely short period of time through [[collectivization of agriculture]] in the effort to remove social differences and inequalities between rural and urban areas.{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}} As there was not much industry in Cambodia at that time, Pol Pot's strategy to accomplish this was to increase agricultural production in order to obtain money for rapid industrialization.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mann |first=Michael |year=2005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cGHGPgj1_tIC |title=The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing |edition=illustrated, reprint |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=343 |isbn=9780521538541 |access-date=28 August 2021 |via=[[Google Books]] |quote=As in other Communist development plans, this agricultural surplus, essentially rice, could be exported to pay for the import of machinery, first for agriculture and light industry, later for heavy industry (Chandler, 1992: 120–8).}}</ref> {{paragraph break}} In analyzing the Khmer Rouge regime, scholars place it within the historical context. The Khmer Rouge came to power through the [[Cambodian Civil War]] (where unparalleled atrocities were executed on both sides) and [[Operation Menu]], resulting in the dropping of more than half a million tonnes of bombs in the country during the civil-war period; this was mainly directed to [[North Vietnam|Communist Vietnam]] but it gave the Khmer Rouge a justification to eliminate the pro-Vietnamese faction and other communists.{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}} The [[Cambodian genocide]], which is described by many scholars as a [[genocide]] and by others, such as Manus Midlarsky, as a [[politicide]],{{r|Straus 2007}} was stopped by Communist Vietnam, and there have been [[allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge]]. South East Asian communism was deeply divided, as China supported the Khmer Rouge, while the Soviet Union and Vietnam opposed it. The United States supported [[Lon Nol]], who seized power in the [[1970 Cambodian coup d'état]], and research has shown that everything in Cambodia was seen as a legitimate target by the United States, whose verdict of its main leaders at that time ([[Richard Nixon]] and [[Henry Kissinger]]) has been harsh, and bombs were gradually dropped on increasingly densely populated areas.{{r|Karllson & Schoenhals 2008}}|group=note}} Daniel Goldhagen argues that 20th century communist regimes "have killed more people than any other regime type."{{sfn|Goldhagen|2009|p=54}} Some authors and politicians, such as [[George G. Watson]], allege that [[genocide]] was dictated in otherwise forgotten works of [[Karl Marx]].<ref name="Grant 1999">{{cite journal |last=Grant |first=Robert |date=November 1999 |title=Review: The Lost Literature of Socialism |journal=The Review of English Studies |volume=50 |number=200 |pages=557–559 |doi=10.1093/res/50.200.557}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Ijabs |first=Ivars |date=23 May 2008 |title=Cienīga atbilde: Soviet Story |trans-title=Worthy answer: Soviet Story |work=Latvijas Vēstnesis |language=lv |url=http://www.lv.lv/?menu=exblogi&sub=&type=full&id=44 |access-date=15 June 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720194148/http://www.lv.lv/?menu=exblogi&sub=&type=full&id=44 |archive-date=20 July 2011 |quote=To present Karl Marx as the 'progenitor of modern genocide' is simply to lie.}}</ref> Many commentators on the political right point to the mass deaths under Communist states, claiming them as an indictment of communism.<ref name="Piereson">{{cite web |last=Piereson |first=James |title=Socialism as a hate crime |url=https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/socialism-as-a-hate-crime-9746 |access-date=22 October 2021 |website=New Criterion}}</ref>{{sfn|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}}<ref name="Satter 2017">{{cite news |last=Satter |first=David |date=6 November 2017 |title=100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810 |access-date=22 October 2021 |issn=0099-9660}}</ref> Opponents of this view argue that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes, and not caused by communism itself, and point to mass deaths in wars and famines that they argue were caused by [[colonialism]], capitalism, and anti-communism as a counterpoint to those killings.<ref>{{harvp|Bevins|2020b}}; {{harvp|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}}; {{harvp|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Sullivan |first1=Dylan |last2=Hickel |first2=Jason |author2-link=Jason Hickel |date=2 December 2022 |title=How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians |work=[[Al Jazeera English|Al Jazeera]] |access-date=14 December 2022 |quote=While the precise number of deaths is sensitive to the assumptions we make about baseline mortality, it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and Mengistu's Ethiopia.}}</ref> According to [[Dovid Katz]] and other historians, a [[historical revisionist]] view of the [[double genocide theory]],<ref>{{cite web |last1=Liedy |first1=Amy Shannon |last2=Ruble |first2=Blair |date=7 March 2011 |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/holocaust-revisionism-ultranationalism-and-the-nazisoviet-double-genocide-debate-eastern |title=Holocaust Revisionism, Ultranationalism, and the Nazi/Soviet 'Double Genocide' Debate in Eastern Europe |publisher=[[Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars|Wilson Center]] |access-date=14 November 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Shafir |first=Michael |date=Summer 2016 |url=http://jsri.ro/ojs/index.php/jsri/article/viewFile/798/696 |title=Ideology, Memory and Religion in Post-Communist East Central Europe: A Comparative Study Focused on Post-Holocaust |journal=Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies |volume=15 |issue=44 |pages=52–110}}</ref> equating mass deaths under Communist states with the Holocaust, is popular in [[Eastern European]] countries and the [[Baltic states]], and their approaches of history have been incorporated in the [[European Union]] agenda,<ref name="Satori">{{cite news |url=https://satori.lv/article/latvias-soviet-story-transitional-justice-and-the-politics-of-commemoration |title=Latvia's 'Soviet Story'. Transitional Justice and the Politics of Commemoration |website=Satory |date=26 October 2009 |access-date=6 August 2021}}</ref> among them the [[Prague Declaration]] in June 2008 and the [[European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism]], which was proclaimed by the [[European Parliament]] in August 2008 and endorsed by the [[OSCE in Europe]] in July 2009. Among many scholars in [[Western Europe]], the comparison of the two regimes and equivalence of their crimes has been, and still is, widely rejected.{{r|Satori}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! 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