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Revision as of 05:04, 10 August 2009 editAnarchangel (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users3,534 edits Famine: Should it be in an article about genocide at all? The scholars would not call it that. In any case, some facts about it, rather than a veiled assertion.← Previous edit Revision as of 05:36, 10 August 2009 edit undoNug (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers22,427 edits Lets wait for the outcome of the AfD before making wholesale changesNext edit →
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The term '''Communist genocide''' <ref>{{cite book |title=Fear of persecution: global human rights, international law, and human well-being |last=White |first=James Daniel |authorlink= |coauthors=Anthony J. Marsella |year=2007 |publisher=Lexington Books |location= |isbn=0739115669 |page= |chapter= Understanding genocide| pages=248-249 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=YeSKaWWGGAAC&pg=PA248&dq |accessdate=}}</ref> refers to the allegations that ] was carried out by ] regimes in the former ],<ref>{{cite book |title=Genocide in the USSR: studies in group destruction |last=Deker |first=Nikolai K |authorlink= |coauthors=Andrei Lebed, Institut zur Erforschung der UdSSR |year=1958 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |location= |isbn= |page=12 |pages= |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=3SRKAAAAMAAJ&q |accessdate=}}</ref> ],<!-- recommend, but do not insist on, a citation --> the ]<ref>{{cite book |title=Advanced Iron Palm |last=Gray |first=Brian |authorlink= |coauthors= |year= |publisher=DEStech Publications |location= |isbn=1932078908 |page=67 |pages= |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=KkbQpekCFugC&pg=RA1-PA67&dq |accessdate=}}.</ref> and Ethiopia.<ref name="gray">Gray, John. In ''Totalitarianism at the crossroads''. Ellen Frankel Paul (Editor). Transaction Publisher, 1990</ref> The term '''Communist genocide''' <ref>{{cite book |title=Fear of persecution: global human rights, international law, and human well-being |last=White |quote=The scale of communist genocide is overwhelming, and it will be years before all the information about these atrocities is processed and disseminated |first=James Daniel |authorlink= |coauthors=Anthony J. Marsella |year=2007 |publisher=Lexington Books |location= |isbn=0739115669 |page= |chapter= Understanding genocide| pages=248-249 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=YeSKaWWGGAAC&pg=PA248&dq |accessdate=}}</ref> refers to the ], or ] <ref>{{cite book |title=Gender and catastrophe |last=Lenṭin |first=Ronit |authorlink= |coauthors= |quote="Soviet and communist genocide and mass state killings, sometimes termed politicide, occurred in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and the People's Republic of China"|year=1997 |publisher=Zed Books |location= |isbn= |page=1997 |pages=|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=di0qAAAAYAAJ&q |accessdate=}}</ref> carried out by ] regimes in the former ],<ref>{{cite book |title=Genocide in the USSR: studies in group destruction |last=Deker |first=Nikolai K |authorlink= |coauthors=Andrei Lebed, Institut zur Erforschung der UdSSR |year=1958 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |location= |isbn= |page=12 |pages= |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=3SRKAAAAMAAJ&q |accessdate=}}</ref> the ], the ],<ref>{{cite book |title=Advanced Iron Palm |last=Gray |first=Brian |authorlink= |coauthors= |year= |publisher=DEStech Publications |location= |isbn=1932078908 |page=67 |pages= |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=KkbQpekCFugC&pg=RA1-PA67&dq |accessdate=}}.</ref> ] <ref>{{cite book |title=A century of genocide: utopias of race and nation |last=Weitz |first=Eric D |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=2003 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location= |isbn=0691009139 |page=8 |quote=In this book I try to provide a historical account for the escalation of genocides in the twentieth centuries by examining in detail four cases: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, especially the ethnic and national purges initiated by Stalin, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia|pages= |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=lg1rlqM9nRMC&pg=PA8&dq |accessdate=}}</ref> and Ethiopia.<ref name="gray">Gray, John. In ''Totalitarianism at the crossroads''. Ellen Frankel Paul (Editor). Transaction Publisher, 1990</ref> Also sometimes called Marxist or Socialist genocide, the phenomenon is a feature of communist policy where the genocide of small, "primitive" peoples has been a recurring component in the development of Communist totalitarianism through the 20th century.<ref name="gray"/>
⚫ Among historians, estimates of the mass killings by communist regimes vary between 60 to 100 million people.<ref>{{cite book |title=Final solutions: mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century |last=Valentino |first=Benjamin |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=2005 |publisher=Cornell University Press |location= |isbn=0801472733 |page=275 |pages= |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC&pg=PA275&dq |accessdate=}}</ref>


Totalitarian communist regimes took the violent "class struggle" described by ] and ] in their ] to its most virulent incarnation, that of ], giving "the world the wars and genocides of Lenin, Stalin and Mao."<ref>Peter A. Zuckerman, Washington, D.C., 1996, Publisher: H.P.N.</ref> According to the Communist Manifesto, the existence of traditional ruling classes (including leaders, property owners, educated professionals, etc.) became "no longer compatible with society", therefore "the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" proposed by it, became a way of laying the so called "foundation for the sway of the proletariat", ostensibly the ideological basis for legally sanctioned genocide of the future.<ref> ''Zbigniew Brzezinski estimates that "the failed effort to build communism" cost the lives of almost sixty million people. Matthew White puts that estimate at eighty&ndash;one million deaths.''</ref><ref></ref> "Never have so few pages done so much damage", writes Benjamin Wiker.<ref>Benjamin Wiker, Regnery Publishing, 2008. ISBN 1596980559, 260 pages</ref>
⚫ According to various sources cited by Benjamin Valentino, (including Zbigniew Brzezinski, who says they are the result of the "failed effort to build communism") estimates of deaths due to variously described degrees of culpability and negligence by communist regimes vary between 60 to 100 million people.<ref>{{cite book |title=Final solutions: mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century |last=Valentino |first=Benjamin |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=2005 |publisher=Cornell University Press |location= |isbn=0801472733 |page=275 |pages= |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC&pg=PA275&dq |accessdate=}}</ref>


⚫ In his book "The Lost Literature of Socialism", George Watson cites an 1849 article called "The Hungarian Struggle", written by Engels and published in Marx's journal the '']'', in which "The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that ], which in advanced nations was already giving place to ], must in its turn be superseded by ]. Entire nations would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age, and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history."<ref>Watson, George, James Clarke & Co., 1998. ISBN 0718829867, 9780718829865, 112 pages</ref>
The "class struggle" described by ] and ] in their ] included the provision of violence.<ref></ref>


==Overview== ==Overview==
] writes "The term ‘genocide’ was first coined in the 1940s to describe the horrors of Nazi rule in occupied Europe. In ], the machine of oppression was the ]; in the ], the ]. In ], it is the ] which means ‘reform through labor.’"<ref>Classicide-Genocide in Communist China, by Harry Wu, ''Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies'', 2006, Vol. 18 Issue 1/2, p121-135, 15p</ref> Former Vietnamese judge Nguyen Cao Quyen, who was a victim of communist political repression after the communist victory in the ], describes communist genocide as the "genocide of entire classes".<ref> The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation</ref> ] writes, "the notion of genocide has originally been confined to the physical annihilation, or intention to do so, of members of whole nations. If it were to have remained confined within those boundaries, the Communist genocide would, perhaps, be arguably applicable to massive deportations and annihilation of a large number of Ukrainians, Balts and other Soviet nationals, but if would leave out the massive extermination of own-nationals. The Cambodian Khmer Rouge, among others, could never be indicted for 'genocide,' which is absurd."<ref>''Re-presenting the Shoah for the Twenty-first Century'' by ], Berghahn Books, 2004, pp 220, ISBN 9781571818027</ref> ] writes "The term ‘genocide’ was first coined in the 1940s to describe the horrors of Nazi rule in occupied Europe. In ], the machine of oppression was the ]; in the ], the ]. In ], it is the ] which means ‘reform through labor.’"<ref>Classicide-Genocide in Communist China, by Harry Wu, ''Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies'', 2006, Vol. 18 Issue 1/2, p121-135, 15p</ref> Former Vietnamese judge Nguyen Cao Quyen, who was a victim of communist political repression after the communist victory in the ], describes communist genocide as the "genocide of entire classes".<ref> The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation</ref> ] writes, "the notion of genocide has originally been confined to the physical annihilation, or intention to do so, of members of whole nations. If it were to have remained confined within those boundaries, the Communist genocide would, perhaps, be arguably applicable to massive deportations and annihilation of a large number of Ukrainians, Balts and other Soviet nationals, but if would leave out the massive extermination of own-nationals. The Cambodian Khmer Rouge, among others, could never be indicted for 'genocide,' which is absurd."<ref>''Re-presenting the Shoah for the Twenty-first Century'' by ], Berghahn Books, 2004, pp 220, ISBN 9781571818027</ref>

⚫ In his book "The Lost Literature of Socialism", George Watson says, "The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that ], which in advanced nations was already giving place to ], must in its turn be superseded by ]. Entire nations would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age, and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history."<ref>Watson, George, Watson cites an 1849 article called "The Hungarian Struggle", written by Engels and published in Marx's journal the '']'' James Clarke & Co., 1998. ISBN 0718829867, 9780718829865, 112 pages</ref>


] in the book ''Totalitarianism at the crossroads'' observed that the political creation of an artificial terror-famine with genocidal results is not a phenomenon restricted to the historical context of Russia and the Ukraine in the Thirties, but is a feature of Communist policy to this day, as evidenced in the sixties in Tibet and now in Ethiopia. The socialist genocide of small, "primitive" peoples, such as the ] and many others, has been a recurrent element in polices at several stages in the development of Soviet and Chinese totalitarianism. Gray states that communist policy in this respect faithfully reproduces classical Marxism, which had an explicit and pronounced contempt for "small, backward and reactionary peoples - no less than for the peasantry as a class and a form of social life".<ref name="gray"/> ] in the book ''Totalitarianism at the crossroads'' observed that the political creation of an artificial terror-famine with genocidal results is not a phenomenon restricted to the historical context of Russia and the Ukraine in the Thirties, but is a feature of Communist policy to this day, as evidenced in the sixties in Tibet and now in Ethiopia. The socialist genocide of small, "primitive" peoples, such as the ] and many others, has been a recurrent element in polices at several stages in the development of Soviet and Chinese totalitarianism. Gray states that communist policy in this respect faithfully reproduces classical Marxism, which had an explicit and pronounced contempt for "small, backward and reactionary peoples - no less than for the peasantry as a class and a form of social life".<ref name="gray"/>
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==History== ==History==
===Soviet Union and Eastern Europe=== ===Soviet Union and Eastern Europe===
During the ], the ]s engaged in a campaign of genocide against the ].<ref>Mikhail Heller & ]. ''Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present.'' Summit Books, 1988. ISBN 0671645358 p. 87.</ref><ref>Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, ]. '']: Crimes, Terror, Repression''. ], 1999. ISBN 0-674-07608-7 pp. 8-9</ref><ref>]. ''A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924.'' ], 1998. ISBN 014024364X p. 660.</ref><ref>]. '']: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him.'' ], 2004. ISBN 0-375-50632-2. p. 83.</ref><ref>]. ''Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917.'' ], 1990. ISBN 1560008873 .</ref> The most reliable estimates indicate that, out of a population of three million, between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20.<ref>Robert Gellately. ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.'' ], 2007 ISBN 1400040051 pp. 70–71.</ref> During the ], the ]s engaged in a campaign of ] against the ].<ref>Mikhail Heller & ]. ''Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present.'' Summit Books, 1988. ISBN 0671645358 p. 87.</ref><ref>Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, ]. '']: Crimes, Terror, Repression''. ], 1999. ISBN 0-674-07608-7 pp. 8-9</ref><ref>]. ''A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924.'' ], 1998. ISBN 014024364X p. 660.</ref><ref>]. '']: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him.'' ], 2004. ISBN 0-375-50632-2. p. 83.</ref><ref>]. ''Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917.'' ], 1990. ISBN 1560008873 .</ref> The most reliable estimates indicate that, out of a population of three million, between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20.<ref>Robert Gellately. ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.'' ], 2007 ISBN 1400040051 pp. 70–71.</ref>


The ] is recognized as genocide by ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], the ], and ].<ref>Veronica Khokhlova '''' <!--A blog site until a better source can be found--></ref> Andrew Gregorovich, member of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES), described the Holodomor or the Ukrainian genocide as "the worst genocide on the continent of Europe in history".<ref>Speech by Andrew Gregorovich, </ref> The ] is recognized as genocide by ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], the ], and ].<ref>Veronica Khokhlova '''' <!--A blog site until a better source can be found--></ref> Andrew Gregorovich, member of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES), described the Holodomor or the Ukrainian genocide as "the worst genocide on the continent of Europe in history".<ref>Speech by Andrew Gregorovich, </ref>
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===Cambodia=== ===Cambodia===
The ] regime in Cambodia, led by ], executed after a veneer of due process, over a million Cambodians, out of a total population of 8 million.<ref>Kaplan, Robert D., The Ends of the Earth, Vintage, 1996, p. 406.</ref> Estimates suggest approximately 1.7 million were killed in the Cambodian genocide and it is described by the ] Cambodian Genocide Program as "one of the worst human tragedies of the last century."<ref> Cambodian Genocide Program, ]</ref> Pol Pot is sometimes described as "the ] of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant".<ref>William Branigin, '']'', April 17, 1998</ref> ] described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the ] era".<ref>''Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution'' by ], ], 2000, pp 141, ISBN 9780521597302</ref> The ] regime in Cambodia, led by ], murdered over a million Cambodians, out of a total population of 8 million.<ref>Kaplan, Robert D., The Ends of the Earth, Vintage, 1996, p. 406.</ref> Estimates suggest approximately 1.7 million were killed in the Cambodian genocide and it is described by the ] Cambodian Genocide Program as "one of the worst human tragedies of the last century."<ref> Cambodian Genocide Program, ]</ref> Pol pot is sometimes described as "the ] of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant".<ref>William Branigin, '']'', April 17, 1998</ref> ] described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the ] era".<ref>''Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution'' by ], ], 2000, pp 141, ISBN 9780521597302</ref>


===China=== ===China===
According to '']'', "Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader."<ref>''Mao: The Unknown Story''</ref>
In 1960, at least some degree of drought and other bad weather affected 55 percent by area of the cultivated land in China, while an estimated 60% of agricultural land received no rain at all.<ref name="Atimes"></ref> The ] yearbooks from 1958 to 1962 also reported abnormal weather, followed by droughts and floods. Close planting, the idea of Russian pseudo-scientist ].<ref>''The People's Republic of China 1949-76'', second edition, Michael Lynch (London: Hodder Education, 2008), p. 57</ref> had been implemented. The density of seedlings was at first tripled and then doubled again, according to the theory, plants of the same species would not compete with each other. In practice they did, which stunted growth and resulted in lower yields. Lysenko's colleague's theory encouraged peasants across China to ] deeply into the soil (up to 1 or 2 meters). They believed the most fertile soil was deep in the earth, allowing extra strong root growth. However, useless rocks, soil, and sand were driven up instead, burying the topsoil. ]'s ], had reorganized the workforce; millions of agricultural worker had joined the iron and steel production workforce.

As a result of these factors, year over year grain production in China dropped by 15% in 1959. By 1960, it was at 70% of its 1958 level. There was no recovery until 1962, after the Great Leap Forward ended.<ref>{{cite web|title=What caused the great Chinese famine?|url=http://www.res.org.uk/society/mediabriefings/pdfs/2000/January/yang3.pdf|date=2000-01-01|accessdate=2009-05-14}}</ref>

According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. Unofficial estimates vary, but are often considerably higher. ], a former ] reporter who spent over ten years gathering information available to no other scholars, estimates a toll of 36 million.<ref name=hunger>, chinaelections.org, ] ]</ref>

Professors and scholars of the famine, who never use the word 'genocide' to describe it, but rather more neutral terms, such as "abnormal deaths", have estimated that they number between 17 million to 50 million. Some western analysts such as ] estimate that about 20-40 million people had died of starvation caused by bad government policy and natural disasters. J. Banister estimates this number is about 23 million. Li Chengrui, a former minister of the ], estimated 22 million (1998). His estimation was based on ] and Jiang Zhenghua's estimation of 17 million. Cao Shuji estimated 32.5 million.


==Recent developments== ==Recent developments==

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Find sources: "Mass killings under communist regimes" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR%5B%5BWikipedia%3AArticles+for+deletion%2FCommunist+genocide%5D%5DAFD
Skulls of victims of communist regime in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
Child victim of the Holodomor. Holodomor is recognized as genocide by Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Estonia, Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, the United States and Hungary

The term Communist genocide refers to the genocide, or politicide carried out by communist regimes in the former USSR, the Democratic Kampuchea, the People's Republic of China, Yugoslavia and Ethiopia. Also sometimes called Marxist or Socialist genocide, the phenomenon is a feature of communist policy where the genocide of small, "primitive" peoples has been a recurring component in the development of Communist totalitarianism through the 20th century. Among historians, estimates of the mass killings by communist regimes vary between 60 to 100 million people.

Totalitarian communist regimes took the violent "class struggle" described by Marx and Engels in their Communist Manifesto to its most virulent incarnation, that of genocide, giving "the world the wars and genocides of Lenin, Stalin and Mao." According to the Communist Manifesto, the existence of traditional ruling classes (including leaders, property owners, educated professionals, etc.) became "no longer compatible with society", therefore "the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie" proposed by it, became a way of laying the so called "foundation for the sway of the proletariat", ostensibly the ideological basis for legally sanctioned genocide of the future. "Never have so few pages done so much damage", writes Benjamin Wiker.

In his book "The Lost Literature of Socialism", George Watson cites an 1849 article called "The Hungarian Struggle", written by Engels and published in Marx's journal the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, in which "The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism, which in advanced nations was already giving place to capitalism, must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire nations would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age, and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history."

Overview

Harry Wu writes "The term ‘genocide’ was first coined in the 1940s to describe the horrors of Nazi rule in occupied Europe. In Nazi Germany, the machine of oppression was the concentration camp; in the Soviet Union, the Gulag. In China, it is the Laogai which means ‘reform through labor.’" Former Vietnamese judge Nguyen Cao Quyen, who was a victim of communist political repression after the communist victory in the Vietnam War, describes communist genocide as the "genocide of entire classes". Ronit Lentin writes, "the notion of genocide has originally been confined to the physical annihilation, or intention to do so, of members of whole nations. If it were to have remained confined within those boundaries, the Communist genocide would, perhaps, be arguably applicable to massive deportations and annihilation of a large number of Ukrainians, Balts and other Soviet nationals, but if would leave out the massive extermination of own-nationals. The Cambodian Khmer Rouge, among others, could never be indicted for 'genocide,' which is absurd."

John N. Gray in the book Totalitarianism at the crossroads observed that the political creation of an artificial terror-famine with genocidal results is not a phenomenon restricted to the historical context of Russia and the Ukraine in the Thirties, but is a feature of Communist policy to this day, as evidenced in the sixties in Tibet and now in Ethiopia. The socialist genocide of small, "primitive" peoples, such as the Kalmucks and many others, has been a recurrent element in polices at several stages in the development of Soviet and Chinese totalitarianism. Gray states that communist policy in this respect faithfully reproduces classical Marxism, which had an explicit and pronounced contempt for "small, backward and reactionary peoples - no less than for the peasantry as a class and a form of social life".

Stéphane Courtois in The Black Book of Communism compared Communism and Nazism as slightly different totalitarian systems. He claims that Communist regimes have killed "approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million victims of Nazis." Nathaniel Weyl wrote of political aristocide that "In modern times, the outstanding instances have been the genocides commited by the Nazis and Communists." According to Dr. Kors, founder of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), "No other system has caused as much death as communism has".

History

Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

During the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks engaged in a campaign of genocide against the Don Cossacks. The most reliable estimates indicate that, out of a population of three million, between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20.

The Holodomor is recognized as genocide by Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Estonia, Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, the United States, and Hungary. Andrew Gregorovich, member of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES), described the Holodomor or the Ukrainian genocide as "the worst genocide on the continent of Europe in history".

After Estonia was incorporated into the Soviet Union, Estonia was subjected to Communist state terror which later evolved to genocide.

According to Arno Tanner, adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki, a special target of Soviet oppressions were the Crimean Tatars, who were eliminated by the thousands from the late 1920s onward, including the whole intellectual class. After WWII, the whole population of Crimean Tatars (200,000-250,000) were deported from their homeland.

Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, led by Pol Pot, murdered over a million Cambodians, out of a total population of 8 million. Estimates suggest approximately 1.7 million were killed in the Cambodian genocide and it is described by the Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program as "one of the worst human tragedies of the last century." Pol pot is sometimes described as "the Hitler of Cambodia" and "a genocidal tyrant". Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era".

China

According to Mao: The Unknown Story, "Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader."

Recent developments

Remembrance of communist genocide

Remembrance Day for the Victims of Communist Genocide is celebrated in Latvia on June 14.

Charges of communist genocide

In 2005, Slovenia charged Mitja Ribicic, a chief in the security forces under Yugoslavia's communist leader Tito, with genocide as Slovene media accused him of orchestrating "summary execution of suspected Nazi collaborators."

In August 2007, Arnold Meri, a cousin of former Estonian president Lennart Meri, faced charges of communist genocide by Estonian authorities.

Denial of communist genocide and law against denial

To prevent the denial of communist genocide, several Central European countries enacted laws which state "endorsing or attempting to justify Nazi or Communist genocide" will be punishable by up to three years of imprisonment.

The Czech Republic has a law against denial of communist genocide. Article 261a of the amended constitution of December 16, 1992 states "the person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves or tries to justify Nazi or communist genocide, or other crimes against humanity of Nazis or communists will be punished by prison of 6 months to 3 years."

In Ukraine, a draft law "On Amendments to the Criminal and the Procedural Criminal Codes of Ukraine" submitted by President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada, envisages prosecution for public denial of the Holodomor Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine as a fact of genocide of the Ukrainian people, and of the Holocaust as the fact of genocide of the Jewish people. The draft law foresees that public denial as well as production and dissemination of materials denying the above shall be punished by a fine of 100 to 300 untaxed minimum salaries, or imprisonment of up to two years.

See also

References

  1. White, James Daniel (2007). "Understanding genocide". Fear of persecution: global human rights, international law, and human well-being. Lexington Books. pp. 248–249. ISBN 0739115669. The scale of communist genocide is overwhelming, and it will be years before all the information about these atrocities is processed and disseminated {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  2. Lenṭin, Ronit (1997). Gender and catastrophe. Zed Books. p. 1997. Soviet and communist genocide and mass state killings, sometimes termed politicide, occurred in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and the People's Republic of China {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. Deker, Nikolai K (1958). Genocide in the USSR: studies in group destruction. Scarecrow Press. p. 12. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  4. Gray, Brian. Advanced Iron Palm. DEStech Publications. p. 67. ISBN 1932078908. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help).
  5. Weitz, Eric D (2003). A century of genocide: utopias of race and nation. Princeton University Press. p. 8. ISBN 0691009139. In this book I try to provide a historical account for the escalation of genocides in the twentieth centuries by examining in detail four cases: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, especially the ethnic and national purges initiated by Stalin, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  6. ^ Gray, John. In Totalitarianism at the crossroads. Ellen Frankel Paul (Editor). Transaction Publisher, 1990
  7. Valentino, Benjamin (2005). Final solutions: mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century. Cornell University Press. p. 275. ISBN 0801472733. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  8. Peter A. Zuckerman, Beyond the Holocaust: Survival or Extinction? Chapter 3: "The Fatal Human Flaws". Washington, D.C., 1996, Publisher: H.P.N.
  9. Benjamin A. Valentino, Final solutions, Cornell University Press Zbigniew Brzezinski estimates that "the failed effort to build communism" cost the lives of almost sixty million people. Matthew White puts that estimate at eighty–one million deaths.
  10. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848
  11. Benjamin Wiker, 10 books that screwed up the world, page 57. Regnery Publishing, 2008. ISBN 1596980559, 260 pages
  12. Watson, George, The Lost Literature of Socialism, page 77. James Clarke & Co., 1998. ISBN 0718829867, 9780718829865, 112 pages
  13. Classicide-Genocide in Communist China, by Harry Wu, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2006, Vol. 18 Issue 1/2, p121-135, 15p
  14. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOCMF) hold Fund Raising Gala The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
  15. Re-presenting the Shoah for the Twenty-first Century by Ronit Lentin, Berghahn Books, 2004, pp 220, ISBN 9781571818027
  16. The Black Book of Communism, Introduction, page 15.
  17. Aristocide as a force in history
  18. Communist Genocide Studies Needed
  19. Mikhail Heller & Aleksandr Nekrich. Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present. Summit Books, 1988. ISBN 0671645358 p. 87.
  20. Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-07608-7 pp. 8-9
  21. Orlando Figes. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924. Penguin Books, 1998. ISBN 014024364X p. 660.
  22. Donald Rayfield. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. Random House, 2004. ISBN 0-375-50632-2. p. 83.
  23. R. J. Rummel. Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers, 1990. ISBN 1560008873 p. 2.
  24. Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1400040051 pp. 70–71.
  25. Veronica Khokhlova Ukraine: Famine Recognized As Genocide
  26. Speech by Andrew Gregorovich, COMMUNIST CRIMES IN UKRAINE
  27. Historical Introduction Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes
  28. Tanner, Arno (2004). "The Crimean Tatars, 2.5 The Genocide and Deportation". The forgotten minorities of Eastern Europe: the history and today of selected ethnic groups in five countries. East-West Books. pp. 26–30. ISBN 9789529168088. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  29. Kaplan, Robert D., The Ends of the Earth, Vintage, 1996, p. 406.
  30. The CGP, 1994-2008 Cambodian Genocide Program, Yale University
  31. William Branigin, Architect of Genocide Was Unrepentant to the End The Washington Post, April 17, 1998
  32. Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution by Martin Shaw, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp 141, ISBN 9780521597302
  33. Mao: The Unknown Story
  34. Remembrance Day for the Victims of Communist Genocide
  35. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4581197.stm Man on Slovenia genocide charges] BBC News
  36. Estonian charged with Communist genocide International Herald Tribune, August 23, 2007
  37. Is Holocaust denial against the law? Anne Frank House
  38. Michael Whine, Expanding Holocaust Denial and Legislation Against It Institute for Global Jewish Affairs
  39. "Public denial of Holodomor Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as genocide of Ukrainian people to be prosecuted", December 12, 2007

Further reading

  • Communist Genocide in Cambodia
  • The Communist Genocide in Romania, by Gheorghe Boldur-Latescu, Nova Science Publishers, 2006, ISBN 9781594542510
  • Murder of A Gentle Land, The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia, by Barron, John & Paul, Anthony, NY Reader's Digest Press 1977, ISBN 0-88349-129-X

External links

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