The Black Book of Communism: Anti-Communist polemic and botched numbers.
By: Morgan K.
Tags: History, Socialism, Communism

The Black book of Communism is the most dishonest piece of Anti-Communist propaganda masquerading as a Historic recounting of Communist regimes. Written in collaboration with half-a-dozen Historians the black book is the originator of not only the 100 million death toll but also the notion that Communism is worse than Naziism. There are a whole host of problems in this book.

Such as this letter from Lenin to Aleksander calling for a Civil War a month after the Russian Civil War had begun.

Accrediting Austro-Hungaria to the occupation of Poland in 1915 instead of Germany.

Or claiming that US-backed Dictator, Fulgencio Batista, was fiercely opposed to the USA.

Or maybe the Anti-Semitic Conspiracy theories.

And comparing intellectuals they disagree with to prostitutes.

This is probably why the only people who cite numbers from the book are Reactionaries, the most dishonest pretend University on the internet, and the historically illiterate. One might say the authors wrote this in good faith but others who have taken the time to study the literature will know this is not true. No better is this illustrated than on P.5. Courtois compares Stalin to a criminal for signing treaties with Nazi Germany. Yet for some reason, there is no mention of all the pacts that capitalist countries signed with Hitler before Stalin did. In 1934 Poland signed a treaty with Germany, Then in 1938 France and Britain signed the Munich appeasement. In the same year, Stalin offered to launch an assault on Germany provided he received support from Britain or France and if Poland agreed to allow Russian military forces to pass through their territory. What happened instead is that Poland signed a treaty with Germany in exchange for the Teschen District. The second problem is the fact that several note-worthy Capitalists were also Nazi Collaborators, Thomas J. Watson, and his company, IBM struck a deal with the Nazi’s to tabulate census data such as the locating of Jews because it was profitable, Hugo Boss designed the uniforms used by the Nazi’s, and Hitler contracted Ferdinand Porche to create the people’s car or Volkswagen as we know it today. This is just the tip of the iceberg not only does Courtois have double standards and also recognizes that what he is doing to communists would be unfair todo to Jesus. (P.2) while also argues that there was no reason to repress anyone in the Soviet Union and that bad conditions in the USSR drove people to collaborate with the Nazis. The problem with these statements is that they are contradictory. The first problem is that if people were collaborating with Nazi’s that would be a reason to repress them because at that time Nazi movements had quite a few victories. The Nazis overthrew the government of Norway and France in 1940 with assistance from Vidkun Quisling and Henri Philippe Petain respectively. If the USSR was at risk of being overthrown by the Nazi’s that would be a justification to repress certain political sentiments.

Another problem with this book is the comparison between Communism and Fascism. Courtois attempts to compare the two and implies that Communism is just as bad as Fascism if not worse, effectively downplaying Fascism in the process. These comparisons quickly fall apart when you note the obvious difference between the two ideologies, the difference is the traits the ideologies target and how they react to the presence of those traits. Naziism targets people based on their race or ethnicity. Socialism targets people based on their class. Naziism seeks to exterminate Non-Aryans whereas Socialism seeks to take the Means of production from the rich and powerful and give it to the Working class as a means to concentrate political and economic power in the hands of the many instead of the hands of the few and unlike Naziism, does not seek to exterminate people based on immutable characteristics.

Race and ethnicity are immutable characteristics if you are born as a Jewish-American you will stay a Jewish-American. If you are born a Moorish African you will stay a Moorish African. Your race and ethnicity are immutable characteristics so policies that target people based on their race or ethnicity are irrational and only have an extreme hatred of the out-group as a justification. Class, on the other hand, is not immutable and can change. If you are born poor you can become rich later on in your life, and as such class is not an immutable characteristic and policies that target you because your class has rational justifications such as promoting social and economic justice, tackling income inequality, and equalizing the standard of living. Am I saying Socialism is not violent? No, of course not. I fully recognize that Socialism is just as capable of violence as any other extremist or revolutionary ideology, however, we still cannot draw parallels between Socialism and Naziism because of why these 2 ideologies commit violence and the fact that Socialism is not inherently violent. Naziism uses violence unnecessarily, an important component of Naziism is the creation of Racial Hierarchy and the industrialized mass-genocide of Jewish, the violence committed in service of Nazi ideology is unnecessary because Non-Aryans aren’t out to get you or your children nor do Non-Aryans have some inherent evilness about them nor is there any justification to use violence on someone for being Non-Aryan. Socialism, on the other hand, does not advocate for Genocide nor is inherently violent. There are pacifist tendencies of Socialism such as Anarcho-Pacifism and Reformist Socialism that seek to create a non-exploitative society through pacifistic means such as making gradual changes to the economy to convert it to a Socialist one over a long gradual process of democratic reform. Another important difference is that history has shown time and time again that the rich and powerful won’t just stand idly by and give up their power and influence even if it is the right thing to do. As was the case with the trans-Atlantic Slave trade, Slaver-owners were so wealthy and entrenched in positions of influence it took countless slave revolts, the Railroad, and a Civil War to get them to give up their slaves, this has been the case throughout history, this is why the French, Haitian, and Greek Revolution happened. The French Revolution happened because the Aristocracy lived lavish life-styles while being ignorant and unconcerned with the daily struggles of French Commoners. The Haitian Revolution happened because French Slave-Holders would not give Slaves their freedom. The Greek Revolution happened because the Ottomans ruralized, militarized, and generally mistreated Greece and its inhabitants. Revolutions are violent but the only reason why they are violent is that it is highly unlikely that the rich or powerful will be interested in helping the oppressed group or even listen to them.

Socialism and Fascism: A false equivalence.

Up until now, I have discussed the differences between the 2 ideologies but even if one notes the similarities they too fall apart very quickly when you take the time to compare how these perceived similarities are implemented and the degree to which they are implemented. For the sake of simplicity, I will be using Stalinism to discuss why the perceived similarities don’t hold strong under scrutiny. For a country to be Fascist it needs to be Nationalist, Traditionalist, Militarist, Collectivist, and Totalitarian. At first blush, the commonalities between Fascism and Stalinism are that both ideologies espouse the need for militarism, a one-party state, and collectivism.

The Collectivism espoused by Stalinism promotes the collective social ownership of the means production by the workers and anti-individualism. Fascism only espouses the need for anti-individualism. Because Stalinism is a form of Socialism, it espouses the worker’s ownership of the means of production and the abolition of private property. Fascism doesn’t support workers’ ownership of the means of production and doesn’t necessarily get rid of private property. Stalin also did not glorify the past of his country. Stalinism is internationalist and supports patriotism. It believes that the workers throughout the world should unite together as a Global Conglomerate of Revolutionaries, that the working class should, and could, cooperate despite their national identity. Fascism espouses the exact polar opposite. Stalinism is not totalitarian, but instead authoritarian, as democracy did exist. The Soviet Union had a form of Democracy called Soviet or council democracy, a political system in which the rule of the population by directly elected councils is exercised. It also had Democratic Centralism, a system in which decisions are reached by vigorous voting processes to determine policy through free discussion, then decisively realized through united action that binds all members of the political party. Fascism, on the other hand, is totalitarian, the government is run by a dictator who is above the law. Stalinism operates on democratic Centralism and Council democracy with a single party that serves as a representation of solidarity of the workers and a medium of cooperation that the workers of society go through. Under Stalinism, the state is a means to an end while under Fascism the state is an end in itself. There’s also the fact that Stalinism escalates class Warfare, while fascism promotes class collaborationism. The fact that they support big militaries had a one-party state or were collectivist to varying degrees in no way means that Stalinism and Fascism are the same. Stalinism is similar to fascism in some ways, similar to how cockroaches are similar to crickets. There are simply too many differences between them for them to be considered similar. Ironically, such comparisons are used by Neoliberals to dismiss Socialism as an alternative to Capitalism, yet Fascism has more in common with Liberal Capitalism than it does with Stalinism. Both Fascist Dictatorships and Liberal Capitalist Democracies upheld a capitalist economic system and property rights, both maintained hierarchical class structures, both had imperial ambitions, both were nationalistic, both had official ideologies of racial supremacy and segregation.

Pre-dismissal of intellectual dishonesty and Conspiracy theories.

Before we get into the actual numbers in the book there are few death tolls I will dismiss either because the authors admitted to those deaths being fabricated, fallacious, or otherwise unjustly attributed to Communism. 1 million deaths are attributed to Vietnamese Communists were never actually counted, Courtois simply added 1 million when he was editing the Black Book. Margolin explicitly stated in an interview with Le Monde that he ‘never reported a million’. 2 million deaths are attributed to Pol Pot. Pol Pot was not a Marxist-Leninist, but rather an Authoritarian Reactionary Primitivist, he never supported the worker’s ownership of the means of production, which is a core component of Socialism. His policies focused on deindustrialization and agrarianism which are in direct opposition to Marxist goals. The Khmer Rouge centered all their economic plans and resources around expanding rice production and exporting that rice to anywhere possible. They aimed to achieve “three harvests per year”. Then they aimed to trade that rice in exchange for arms to fight against the newly unified Socialist Vietnam.

They seized the means of production and then let it waste away and abandoned the cities and the few sites of industrial production. Entire harvests were prepared by the workers, but not an inkling of the produce of their labor was awarded to them. The Khmer Rouge seized the entire surplus produced by the labor of the working people, which in some cases made them even more exploitative than capitalists. It is hard to find anything slightly Socialist about the Khmer Rouges goals beyond the seizing of the wealth of the urban elites. Even the Vietnamese Communists supported the assassination of Pol Pot. Leaders such as Ieng Sary and the Khmer Rouge by extension rejected Socialism. They were very open about this, Ieng Sary was once quoted as saying:” We are not communists … we are revolutionaries” who do not ‘belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina.”

A large chunk of the deaths are either unjustly attributed to Communists, inflated, or simply don’t make sense to count as ‘Victims’ of Communism. For example, the authors inflate a number of 20,000 to 37,000 which is almost twice as much as 20,000, and then on another occasion, the authors count missing POWs as Victims of Communism.

Another thing worth mentioning is the constant attempts to paint Nazi’s and their collaborators in a sympathetic light. In one instance a nazi concentration camp guard who was killed by a communist prisoner is counted as a victim of communism and then on another occasion, the OUN/UPA terrorists who participated in the murdering of Jews alongside Nazis in Babi Yar where they set up the syrets concentration camp are portrayed as heroic victims of Communism.

Speaking of which, the Black Book of Communism is filled to the brim with anti-semitism, on P.86 They claim that because prominent thought leaders in the Russian Socialist Movement had Jewish heritage the labels ‘Jew’ and ‘Bolshevik’ amalgamated. Werth and Courtois provide absolutely no evidence of this. It is also rather odd that they chose to focus specifically on the Jewish heritage of these various thought leaders. These thought leaders and the vast majority of Russians are extremely multi-ethnic, Lenin had Chuvash, Kalmyk, German, Swedish, and Ashkenazi heritage, going off what Courtois wrote we can safely assume that if he heard this he would likely focus exclusively on the Ashkenazi part and ignore Lenin’s Chuvash, Kalmyk, German, and Swedish heritage. Another example of anti-semitism can be found on P.99. The authors not only attempts to portray the white army and Cossacks in a sympathetic light but goes on to say:

So now that we have established that this book was written in bad faith, omits inconvenient facts, contains fabricated and inflated death tolls, portrays Fascists sympathetically, and contains instants of anti-semitism I think it is time to look at the actual numbers and see if they hold up.

The Soviet Union and Maoist China: A show of dishonesty, lack of up-to-date statistics, and lack of mathematical literacy.

The first section of the book focuses on the USSR and its supposed 20 million death toll. This death toll is based largely on inflated and unsubstantiated numbers, particularly in regards to the Soviet Famine of 1932, Werth attributes 6 million deaths while more recent analysis backed by archival soviet statistics cite a death toll of between 1.8 and 2.7 million. It is also unfair to blame Socialism or even Stalin for the famine, it was not manufactured nor did Stalin stand idle while his people starved. During this time the Great Depression was in full swing and the Nazi’s were gaining traction, this lead to Stalin prioritizing the industrialization of the USSR as preparation for a potential war in the near future, lacking in the necessary resources to do so, the USSR turned to import the necessary resources from Western Europe and North America. Eventually, Europe and America instituted what was called the “Golden Blockade”. This meant that Western Powers would refuse to accept gold as payment for industrial exports to the USSR. They instead demanded to be paid in oil, timber, and grain. This blockade remained in place for several years. At the same time, Britain imposed an 80% embargo on exports to the USSR and the USA began destroying grain in large quantities, while simultaneously taking grain as payment from the USSR. This was called the Agricultural Adjustment Act and continued under Roosevelt as a means to raise prices to lower the severity of the depression. Stalin attempted to improve the situation by increasing exports of surplus grain to areas that needed it the most. As evidenced by the 144. Decree of Politburo of the CC VCP of June 16, 1932:

“a) To release to the Ukraine 2,000 tons of oats for food needs from the unused seed reserves;

b) to release to the Ukraine ~3,600,000 ? of corn for food of that released for sowing for the Odessa oblast’ but not used for that purpose;

c) to release ~2,520,000 ? of grain for collective farms in the sugar-beet regions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. for food needs;

d) to release ~8,280,000 ? of grain for collective farms in the sugar-beet regions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. for food needs;

e) to require comrade Chubar’ to personally verify the fulfilling of the released grain for the sugar-beet Soviet and collective farms, that it be used

strictly for this purpose;

f) to release ~900,000 ? of grain for the sugar-beet Soviet farms of the Central Black Earth Region for food needs in connection with the gathering of the

harvest, first requiring comrade Vareikis to personally verify that the grain released is used for the assigned purpose;

g) by the present decision to consider the question of food aid to sugar-beet producing Soviet and collective farms closed.”

Stalin also urged the Communist Party of Ukraine to take appropriate measures to prevent crop failure, saying:

“The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.”

According to the preface of well-known Sovietologists R. W. Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft’s collaborative work titled “The Years of Hunger Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933”:

“In our own work we, like V. P. Kozlov, have found no evidence that the Soviet authorities undertook a program of genocide against Ukraine. It is also certain that the statements by Ukrainian politicians and publicists about the deaths from famine in Ukraine are greatly exaggerated. A prominent Ukrainian historian, Stanislas Kul’chitskii, estimated deaths from famine in Ukraine at 3.5 million and Ukrainian demographers estimate that excess death in Ukraine in the whole period 1926–39 (most of them during the famine) amounted to 3 million.”

For some reason, Werth also counts the 5 million famine deaths from the 1922 famine as victims of Communism, which is absurd, to say the least, the famine of 1922 was caused by six and a half years of World War I, the Civil Wars of 1918 and 1920, and the Kulaks with-holding large quantities of grain to sell on the black market. Another important bit of information to consider about the 20 million death toll, is its origins as a propaganda piece produced by Robert Conquest, Conquest for those of you who don’t know, was a historian and propagandist employed by the British Information Research Department, a department whose sole function was to produce fallacious and ill-factual anti-communist propaganda. One of his more ludicrous assertions is that Stalin masterminded the assassination of Kirov as his own “Reichstag Fire” and as a justification to begin the purges, a claim for which no reliable evidence exists. Conquest was hardly one to hide his anti-Soviet and anti-Marxist bias. Much of his original work such as The Harvest of Sorrow was pieced together when the Soviet Union was still in existence, as such his original sources are often very poor and extremely biased. According to J. Arch Getty:

“Sometimes, the “scholarship” had been more than simply careless. Recent investigations of British intelligence activities (following in the wake of U.S. post-Watergate revelations) suggest that Robert Conquest, author of the highly influential Great Terror, accepted payment from British intelligence agencies for consciously falsifying information about the Soviet Union. Consequently, the works of such an individual can hardly be considered valid scholarly works by his peers in the Western academic community.”

(Source: Arch Getty, “The Great Purges Reconsidered,” Ph.D. dissertation, Boston College, 1979, p. 64 note 57.)

The 65 million deaths attributed to Maoist China is also largely overstated. The Black Book claims that the Cultural Revolution was responsible for 5 million deaths, however according to the 3rd edition of Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, the Cultural Revolution only resulted in 40,000 deaths. The vast majority of deaths blamed on Mao are famine-related and were resultant of the Great Chinese Famine, however, the Great Famine was caused by a combination of natural factors and lack of agricultural understanding. It also did not cause the 43 million deaths estimated by the Black Book, as Leslie Holmes clarified, the Famine actually caused 15 million fatalities, this estimate is backed by official Chinese statistics. While reading Margolin’s chapter on Mao’s China, I was left questioning his basic mathematical and logic skills or rather the lack thereof. On P.492 Margolin wrote:

The first number is actually 68.58 per thousand. 68% is 68 per hundred meaning that Margolin not only overestimated by a factor of 10 but also said that despite the 68% mortality rate only 6% died. Margolin then goes on to denounce the regime in China for creating a situation where “the birth rate fell to almost zero as women were unable to conceive because of malnutrition.” Ironically, if that is true, Maoist China’s death toll must be very low, far less than the 20 million Margolin attributes.

Conclusion.

Peter Kenez was 100% correct when he asserted that Courtois is a careless historian and ridiculed the Black Book of Communism on the grounds of it being historically inaccurate and essentially being Anti-Communist polemic. This is evidenced not only by the innumerable errors in the Black Book and botched numbers but also by Courtois defining all unnatural deaths in Communist regimes as the fault of the leadership of the regime and by extension, the entire Socialist movement, regardless of ideology, stated goals, or tendency.