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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in its claim that feudalism, which in advanced nations was already giving place to capitalism, must in its turn be superseded by socialism.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, according to the Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes, an organisation founded by Mart Laar, 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 including a provision 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

• Crime against humanity
• Nazi genocide
• Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes

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

• Genocidecurriculum.org

• Articles to be merged from August 2009
• Misplaced Pages neutral point of view disputes from August 2009
• Communism
• Genocide