Communism killed 100 miliion people? the real number?

[RedMarxist]

How many did "communism" kill from the early half of the 1920's through 1991? Now I'm no idiot, and am well aware that 100 million people was a drastically inflated number.

How many did "it" really kill?

[LegendZ]

0

[Astarte]

http://netgautam.com/tumblr/uploads/square-large-lousy.jpg :D

[jake williams]

There isn't a simple answer. Using what definitions? What constitutes someone being killed by communism?

[Sensible Socialist]

Communism killed a grand total of 0 people. Considering there has never been a large and effective communist region of the world, it's like asking how many presents has Santa delivered. The answer is zero.

I understand your question, however. But I find it odd how people blame every little event that happened under a "communist" government to be the fault of the ideology. As if Stalin used his weather machine to engineer a famine. Yet when people point out famines today (look at Somalia and other parts of Africa) it's never the fault of capitalism, but of nature, or bad planning, or corrupt government.

Are the leaders of nations that were supposedly communist responsible for the deaths of people? Yes. But it's nonsensible to try and estimate a number when the parameters and definitions for responsibilty vary depending on what political beliefs each government was founded on. Unless there is a certifiable metric that we can use to judge every single government, there is no point in trying to estimate the number that were killed under communism, however much I loathe that last statement.

[Binh]

Far less than the White armies.

[RichardAWilson]

"Communism," I.e. Stalinism, did kill around 100 million. However, as was said, that wasn't Communism. How many men, women and children has capitalism killed?

How many deaths can be attributed to Imperialism, Colonialism, Slavery and Malnutrition?

I'd wager the figure is much larger than 100 million.



15 million children die of hunger each and every year.


Between now and 2018: Capitalism will have killed more people than decades of so-called "Communism."

[Rusty Shackleford]

"Communism," I.e. Stalinism, did kill around 100 million. However, as was said, that wasn't Communism. How many men, women and children has capitalism killed?



so, you just accept the allegation that millions were killed at the hands of socialist governments but brush them off as 'stalinism' without even looking at the sources or claims?

[Commissar Rykov]

I don't think ideologies can kill. I believe that is a human capacity.

[Commissar Rykov]

so, you just accept the allegation that millions were killed at the hands of socialist governments but brush them off as 'stalinism' without even looking at the sources or claims?

Look up false allegations promoted by the Black Book of Communism? Never! I take my Bourgeois Propaganda straight with no sugar mixed in.

[RichardAWilson]

so, you just accept the allegation that millions were killed at the hands of socialist governments but brush them off as 'stalinism' without even looking at the sources or claims?


Yes, I do. Stalinism wasn't Socialism. Maoism wasn't Socialism.

Cuba comes much closer to Socialism than they did and how many died in Socialist-Cuba? Almost none! Indeed, Cuban Socialism saved lives because malnutrition was eradicated.

As for the sources and claims, I don't need them. Historians have documented the 20 million that died in Stalin's U.S.S.R. Once you add in Mao's "Cultural Revolution," you have a massive figure.

Like I said though: Mao and Stalin weren't Socialists. So the answer to the above question is: ZERO.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Yes, I do. Stalinism wasn't Socialism. Maoism wasn't Socialism.

Cuba comes much closer to Socialism than they did and how many died in Socialist-Cuba? Almost none! Indeed, Cuban Socialism saved lives because malnutrition was eradicated.

As for the sources and claims, I don't need them. Historians have documented the 20 million that died in Stalin's U.S.S.R. Once you add in Mao's "Cultural Revolution," you have a massive figure.

Like I said though: Mao and Stalin weren't Socialists. So the answer to the above question is: ZERO.


Historians like Kenneth Clark? Like the John Birch Society?

[Renno]

fascism 60 million, communism 100 million, capitalism still counting

Anarchism 0

[Fulanito de Tal]

Obviously, it depends on how you define communism, killings, to what do you attribute those killing, and the criteria for dependable sources. You will get so many numbers that they will not bare much practicality.

[The Man]

fascism 60 million, communism 100 million, capitalism still counting

Anarchism 0


Communism killed 100 million people? Where? In a different galaxy?

[Bardo]

I don't think ideologies can kill. I believe that is a human capacity.

This.

Ideologies don't kill people, people kill people. Are we to attribute the genocide of native Americans to capitalism? The use of atomic weapons, napalm and carpet bombs too?

[RichardAWilson]

Historians like Kenneth Clark? Like the John Birch Society?


Mainstream Historians. The U.S.S.R's population decline is evidence enough of Stalin's mass murders and starvation. The same holds for Mao's China.

[Commissar Rykov]

Mainstream Historians. The U.S.S.R's population decline is evidence enough of Stalin's mass murders and starvation. The same holds for Mao's China.

Mainstream Historians=Bourgeois Historians. You mean the same people that to this day justify Union Busting, Strike Breaking, Manifest Destiny, Vietnam Intervention and other bullshit? Yeah ok you go with that.

[La Peur Rouge]

Ideologies don't kill people

I'm not sure if this is necessarily true...the effects of capitalism and it's ideology kill people every day.

[Ocean Seal]

Let's be realistic, the capitalists could never come up with a correct figure for the deaths under communism because they would have to stretch the definition of kill so far that they would have to screw themselves. Is a person starving, a killing? Because that's the only way how they would get these ridiculous figures of around 100 mln. But lets be honest, the highest reactionary numbers are 25 mln for the GLF, 7 mln for the Soviet famine of 32-33, and a couple more million from all auxiliary famines. That's very far from 100 mln. This would mean that the communists were deliberately trying to kill large parts of their population ala Hitler. The only difference is that Hitler actually had the means to kill people in the form of death camps and gas chambers. Have the capitalists ever produced any evidence of anything similar occurring in the Soviet Union or China? Then how did they get from 30-40 mln to 100 mln is the best question to ask. Let's take it a step further, why is starvation under communism murder? Starvation is only murder when it is neglectful or intentional. These famines were unfortunate, but not deliberate. Public policy mistakes are not murder. There wasn't enough food because usually in these periods, socialist economies were recovering from war. Now having enough food to feed everyone, and not feeding them in order to keep prices high in the market system, is in my opinion murder.

What's India's excuse for having starving people each year?
As a user pointed out earlier 15 mln children starve each year, what is the excuse for global capitalism there?
Now I would agree that ideologies can't truly kill, but capitalism by the very virtue of the market economy kills millions of people each year simply to maintain the capitalist system. Capital has outlived its necessity and keeping it around-- or encouraging that we keep it around is murderous.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Mainstream Historians. The U.S.S.R's population decline is evidence enough of Stalin's mass murders and starvation. The same holds for Mao's China.
population decline in China? After the revolution, the population EXPLODED(numerically, not literally).

And in the Soviet Union?

Droughts and agricultural failures were very common in the early fSU and former russian empire.

Hell, there was one in 1891 where one in six peasants died.

WWI and the civil war didnt help with it at all. But its not like it was the only cause of crop failures was the presence of Stalin or the policies of the CPSU.

Also, the population surely did take a nosedive between 1941 and 1945. im not sure why though, probably just stalinism.

[RichardAWilson]

The highest Soviet authorities ordered 386,798 people shot in the “Kulak Operation” of 1937–1938.


In the largest of these, the “Polish Operation” that began in August 1937, 111,091 people accused of espionage for Poland were shot. In all, 682,691 people were killed during the Great Terror.

No, you're right, Stalin didn't contribute to 20 million deaths!

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper-says-20-million-died-as-victims-of-stalin.html



A Soviet weekly newspaper today published the most detailed accounting of Stalin's victims yet presented to a mass audience here, indicating that about 20 million died in labor camps, forced collectivization, famine and executions.


Thank you Stalin and Mao for ruining the word "Communism."

Even those that dispute the 20 million figure agree that Stalin was responsible for mass murder.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/



Of those who starved, the 3.3 million or so inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine who died in 1932 and 1933 were victims of a deliberate killing policy related to nationality.




In early 1930, Stalin had announced his intention to “liquidate” prosperous peasants (“kulaks”) as a class so that the state could control agriculture and use capital extracted from the countryside to build industry. Tens of thousands of people were shot by Soviet state police




Those who remained lost their land and often went hungry as the state requisitioned food for export. The first victims of starvation were the nomads of Soviet Kazakhstan, where about 1.3 million people died.




Blaming Ukrainians for the failure of his own policy, he ordered a series of measures—such as sealing the borders of that Soviet republic—that ensured mass death.

[L.A.P.]

Yes, I do. Stalinism wasn't Socialism. Maoism wasn't Socialism.

Cuba comes much closer to Socialism than they did and how many died in Socialist-Cuba? Almost none! Indeed, Cuban Socialism saved lives because malnutrition was eradicated.

As for the sources and claims, I don't need them. Historians have documented the 20 million that died in Stalin's U.S.S.R. Once you add in Mao's "Cultural Revolution," you have a massive figure.

Like I said though: Mao and Stalin weren't Socialists. So the answer to the above question is: ZERO.

Even the most raging Anti-Stalinist isn't stupid enough to think 100 million were killed by Stalinism. Also, Cuba is by all means what you would call "Stalinist".

[Ocean Seal]

[QUOTE=RichardAWilson;2176737]China's population fell during the Cultural Revolution.
/QUOTE]
Keep in mind that birthrates also went down significantly and that was probably the largest reason behind the fact that the population didn't increase that much (it never fell I believe http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_Pop_WPP2006.htm). India's population is increasing, yet the starvation rate is probably higher than China's during the cultural revolution.

[RichardAWilson]

Stalinism (Soviet Union, Eastern-Europe, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and North Korea) is responsible for between 60 and 100 million deaths.

Cuba isn't a Stalinist State. It isn't Socialist either.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Im not arguing that the Soviet Union during Stalin's leadership was all fun and games.

War Communism(when lenin was at the helm of the party) had a negative effect on farmers when food was relocated to cities and to the red army to keep the civil war from ending in a white victory. Nothing works out perfectly. And that is just one point of it.

Not all jailings were just or justified.

But, im not going to cry over former nobility and bourgeoisie being exiled.

Also, Cuba is socialist. The reigning mode of production is socialism. But yes, they have made non-revolutionary reforms recently to deal with the side effects of the embargo and the recent recession.

[RichardAWilson]

Nvm.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

No, you're right, Stalin didn't contribute to 20 million deaths!

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper-says-20-million-died-as-victims-of-stalin.html



Nonsense.


Of those who starved, the 3.3 million or so inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine who died in 1932 and 1933 were victims of a deliberate killing policy related to nationality. There was no intentional policy, nor was it related to nationality (this is Ukrainian nationalist nonsense). Death toll is estimated at between 1.1 and 3-something million. Problems were complex, and there was false and incorrect farm yield reports from the area that resulted in too little food being left. It was not until quite a lot later that it became clear that there was a serious famine going on and by this time the policy was reversed and food transfers reversed.

Many deaths were also in the area around the Volga delta in the RSFSR, so it was by no means confined to the Ukrainian SSR.


In early 1930, Stalin had announced his intention to “liquidate” prosperous peasants (“kulaks”) as a class so that the state could control agriculture and use capital extracted from the countryside to build industry. Tens of thousands of people were shot by Soviet state policeThe term was "liquidation of the kulaks as a class", and did not always entail execution; those were difficult times and apparently desperate measures were considered necessary; although I am not sure, are you taking the stance that the kulaks did not exist or that it was not right to do away with them?


Blaming Ukrainians for the failure of his own policy, he ordered a series of measures—such as sealing the borders of that Soviet republic—that ensured mass death. Stalin blaming of the typical simplistic variety. I don't even know if Stalin had anything to do with that; the restrictions on the border travels I seem to remember had to do with the instability regarding the program of de-kulakisation and the struggles, regardless, this time was very chaotic and it is impossible for anyone to know with any certainty what exactly took place; however, a source such as yours, is hardly a good one.

As for total death toll; between 600,000 and 900,000 were executed during the great purges, about half of all arrests; labour camp and colony population varied between 1 and 2.5 or so million, and the death rate therein varied considerably, dropping to the levels in civilian population after new medicine was made available after 1947 or so, though a majority of prison/camp population was not guilty of political crimes.

[RichardAWilson]

The Kulaks were a serious issue. However, Stalin's forced industrialization led to mass starvation among the peasants and rural farm workers.

I'm stating that Stalinism and the methods Stalin used led to mass oppression, starvation and execution. Stalin sold food and nutrition to foreigners while his own people starved.

He did this as a means of earning foreign exchange for importing machines for heavy industry.

(I.e. Koch Industries?)

Stalin did hate the Ukrainians. However, I don't know if their starvation was intentional.

Like I said: Millions died due to Stalinism. It doesn't matter if it's 20 million or 10 million.

So: once again: Stalinism (in Europe, the Soviet-Union and Asia) led to millions of deaths.

However, like I said, that wasn't Socialism - which has claimed zero.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

The Kulaks were a serious issue. However, Stalin's forced industrialization led to mass starvation among the peasants and rural farm workers.

I'm stating that Stalinism and the methods Stalin used led to mass oppression, starvation and execution. Stalin sold food and nutrition to foreigners while his own people starved.


I don't think it is as easy to say all of it was the fault of Stalin, I think this is reductionist and is buying into the main-stream nonsense where Stalin is thought of as the only relevant variable in Soviet politics at the time.

I don't agree with the funding industrialisation by wholesale export of grain, but this sort of corruption is unavoidable in those circumstances, where one no matter what remains dependent on capitalism and a part of the system, however, the actual chaos that appeared was a result of several factors converging; i.e. lower than expected crop yields, the intensifying rural struggles between more well-off peasants and those with nothing, as well as the (I think wrongly) pursued kolhozy-fication policy and the grain export for hard exchange currency.


However, like I said, that wasn't Socialism - which has claimed zero.

This is largely irrelevant though. Simply distancing yourself from it, saying it doesn't reflect your ideal socialism, is not very productive. Those who are not socialists (which is a wide spectrum as it is) will not really see the different nuances that clearly, and the main-stream propaganda of deaths hither thither and blaming it on "socialism" as an ideology (when it comes to capitalism, when we say deaths by capitalism, we obviously mean the economic system, not any of the many capitalist ideologies) will continue regardless.

It is silly to think that the struggle for socialism would not result in some death, even in the most flawless and successful swift revolution, I imagine there would still be some blood of the bourgeoisie to be spilled.

[Forward Union]

Millions died of starvation in the great depression. Are the wetsern leaders of time time, or the economic system often accused of mass murder ? are these deaths used to de-legitimate capitalism?

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Funny, I just came from a museum exhibition about the Cultural Revolution in China - pretty interesting, I'll post a review later.

Anyhow, this show had a room devoted to Communist Terror. One panel suggested a direct connection between terror and the Cult of Personality, as exemplified by Stalin, Hoxha, Tito, Ho Chi Minh, Ceaucesscu and Kim Il song. Those were the only leaders mentioned.

BTW: This museum's on the Heldenplatz, in Vienna, in the same building from which der Fuehrer addressed throngs of supporters in 1938....

[RedMarxist]

I never plan to read the black book of communism. 1) its 900 pages long

and 2) it lies


Right now I'm reading a neutral, unbiased book titled: The Red Flag: A History of Communism

The book author did meticulous research, very well written too, with almost every page containing personal stories from people famous and average living in the USSR, China, Vietnam, etc. throughout history, which he uses to backup his research and make it more interesting.

I strongly recommend giving it a shot. Its 720 pages long and still better and more well researched then the black book. plus he talks extensively about the Naxals, Nepal, and the New People's Army in his modern day section.

[RemoveYourChains]

How many did "communism" kill from the early half of the 1920's through 1991? Now I'm no idiot, and am well aware that 100 million people was a drastically inflated number.

How many did "it" really kill?

Zero.

"100 million" is a grossly inflated number. And as for the more conservative/realistic estimates of people who died in the Soviet Union, China, etc. - as others here have indicated - we really need to ask of those deaths can be attributed to socialism/communism.

I would say that they cannot. And not even by way of some "no true scotsman" type argument, or having to resort to denying the socialist credentials of the USSR, etc. (though I certainly can see how one can make those arguments.)

Deaths due to famine caused by warfare, aggravated by specific policy mistakes, internal strife/civil war, despotic behavior, etc. cannot (by definition) be attributed to the logic of socialism/communism.

On the other hand, the same cannot be said to the scarcely calculated death toll we can rightfully attribute to the logic of capitalism and colonialism. The genocide of new world aboriginals alone eclipses even the most wildly inflated claims of those who allegedly died under communist regimes, and follows directly from the ideological underpinnings of the feudal/mercantile (and later, capitalist) regimes this occurred under.

[BlackMarx]

How many did "communism" kill from the early half of the 1920's through 1991? Now I'm no idiot, and am well aware that 100 million people was a drastically inflated number.

How many did "it" really kill?
Well first of all, the question is phrased wrong. Communism, with a small c, didn't kill anyone because communism in its original conception is a state of society. Now, Communism, capital c is another story; capital C communism refers to 'The Communist system.'

Communist regimes were very brutal once they were established in various countries because Communist often came to power by taking over other political parties, institutions or through imperialism (See Stalin and Eastern Europe). The only time Communist relatively came to power legitimately was in countries where communist came to power through indigenous struggles(See Tito and the Partisans).

The period of 'war communism' is often a debated subject because Lenin came to power in a basically failed state that was hanging on by the thread; yet he was a fringe element compared to other Left Wing groups that were more popular (like the Socialist Revolutionaries). The atrocities of Communism generally started with what is known as the 'third period,' a point in USSR where Stalin began his great purges and started killing off a lot of the Bolsheviks who Stalin felt were not fully loyal, were threat, or became an obsession in his paranoia. Stalin basically defined 20th century Communism because other Communist regimes began to shape themselves in terms of public/economic policy in the likeness of Stalinist Russia; which was reinforced through the Cominform.

Stalin's policies led to many deaths that were repeated in other countries that conformed to Stalin's policies of forced collectivation, central planning or resisted Moscow's political line; Holodomor in Ukraine being a prime example which killed an estimated 6 - 12 million. The only exception I think was 1950s China, where the Great Leap Forward was due to Mao's completely reckless policy of rural development, while ignoring 'foreign' technical advice and expertise; which through a combination of droughts, famines and lack of knowledge led to the deaths of 30 million people in the countryside.

A good book on the legacy of 20th century communism is Archie Brown's, 'Rise and Fall of Communism.' Its an excellent book and is fairly objective.

[chegitz guevara]

Millions died of starvation in the great depression. Are the wetsern leaders of time time, or the economic system often accused of mass murder ? are these deaths used to de-legitimate capitalism?

Where?

[Forward Union]

Where?

The United States, as well as western Europe. According to Russian historian Boris Borisov, being interviewed by RT:


B.B.: Seven and a half million people does not mean the number of particular victims of the famine, but a general demographic loss, or the difference between the supposed population on the date of the census that was due to be held in 1940 and the factual number of people. In reality, the total demographic loss is bigger. The fact is not contested by anyone. The figure is more than ten million people.

The 10 or so million he talks about in the interview is a "demographic loss" not "people who starved to death". He estimates two million died of starvation, in the United States alone, and around 5.5million + were not born in the period as a result. I've read this in numerous places, this was just the first google result.

The great depression no doubt lead to mass starvation in Europe as well. Increase in Strikes and general social conflict as well as, strikers being shot etc (these kinds of deaths aren't included in the 2million figure). We know what happened in Germany as a result for example.

If Socialism can be held responsible for the effects of the Industrialisation process in Russia, then Capitalism ought to be held responsible for everything you have ever read about in modern history, from Mines collapsing on miners in the early 1800s to Child chimney sweeps getting black lung in Victorian Britain. The Black book of Capitalism basically couldn't be written because it would be the longest and most horrific book ever put in print, but possibly also because any person who tried to, and could concieve fully of what they were writing would in most cases be psychologically overwhelmed by the scale of slaughter and inhumane practice they had to document.

[Agent Blazkowicz]

I never plan to read the black book of communism. 1) its 900 pages long

I hardly think the page number sum should be taken into account for anything. Also, I own this book and I like it and let me tell you why. I like it because I think it's a giant collection of the mistakes we have made (but the keyword here would be presumably). Even if you disagree with the book's main thesis and disagree with a specific section of the book, you can always fact check it, find it's source, look it up, etc.

[chegitz guevara]

The United States, as well as western Europe. According to Russian historian Boris Borisov, being interviewed by RT:

Quoting RT is like quoting The National Enquirer. And that article is absolute shite. We already tore it apart on RevLeft. All it means is that seven million less people were born than were expected to have been born, because if seven million people starved to death, this country couldn't have hidden it. Our grandparents would have told us about one out of every twenty people dying.

===========

Can comrades stop playing semantic games. Communism clearly = the communist movement.

Let us, for the moment, accept the claims of the apologists for capitalism, the communism killed 100,000,000 human beings between 1917 and 1991, and this, therefore, is proof of its evil and that it should be forever hated. What then are we to make of capitalist India, which has killed 100,000,000 since 1947. What shall we make of a system in which 9.2 million children under the age of five died in 2007 alone, approximately 187 million from 1991 to 2007? If communism is monstrous, capitalism is a system which even monsters fear.

Of course, with the opening of the Soviet archives, the ridiculous claims of 100,00,000 people dead to communism have been proven false. At most, we can lay five million extra deaths in the USSR due to the policies of Stalinism, both from stupidity as well as cruelty (not including WWII). This includes 3.3 million people who died during the 32-33 famine, the majority of whom were ethnically Russian, not Ukrainian. While most deaths occured in the Ukraine, it largely happened in the eastern, Russian settled region. Despite the regularity of such famines (about once ever ten years), we cannot absolve the Stalinist regime from culpability. In fact, it makes it worse, because it should have been expected. Furthermore, it took nearly a year for Moscow to respond to the reports of a famine being sent by commissars in the region, at which point they reversed their policy of forced grain collection and collectivization, and began sending relief.

The Democide Project claims sixty million died in Mao's China during the famine there. One can only wonder how they come up with this claim. We only know that it occurred because the PRC itself, twenty years after the fact, told the world. Since this revolution occurred during a period of trying to discredit Mao and building support for the capitalist road taken by Deng and friends, we cannot trust these numbers. However, they are the only numbers we have, and if they are faked, the Chinese have been very consistent about maintaining a twenty million person demographic hole for that period for each census. This doesn't mean twenty million died. It means there were twenty million less people than they expected, which is a combination of death as well as fewer births. What the actual numbers are will probably never be known.

How many died because of communism? Who knows. How many were saved because of communism? Well, in the PRC, the average life span doubled in twenty years, from 35 to 65 between 1949 and 1970. Of course, before the revolution, China had seen twenty years of war, including a racist, "genocidal" war by the Japanese, but the numbers are impressive regardless, and point to something real.

Still, we shouldn't be blasé, just because capitalism is ten times more lethal, with only twice the population under its control. We need to examine how our movement, which is meant to liberate human and end these abuses, became abusive and oppressive. We can't stop it from happening again if we don't figure out how it happened before, and admit that it happened before.

[Forward Union]

Quoting RT is like quoting The National Enquirer. And that article is absolute shite. We already tore it apart on RevLeft. All it means is that seven million less people were born than were expected to have been born, because if seven million people starved to death, this country couldn't have hidden it. Our grandparents would have told us about one out of every twenty people dying.

No one claimed seven million people starved to death. Whose position are you attacking?. According to DigitalHistory, there were so many accounts of people starving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief!

And if you accept the 7-10 million demographic loss figure (which you seem to) then what do you speculate was the cause? Does poverty make people less horney? I suppose you can get out of the trap by claiming the malnutrition caused a vast number of miscarriages and stillbirths, rather than actual deaths.

[chegitz guevara]

So many? A few hundred at most, according to articles at the time. Nearly every family would have been touched by a famine that massive, if it had occurred, even if it was "only" two million people.

I accept the figure of a seven million demographic hole because we can (and did) look at the census data for the period, and there is a slight diminishment of population growth in the mid 30s. The population still grew, just not as rapidly.

The article is bullshit, and is the product of Russian nationalism. The "researcher" was tired of people talking about the famine in the USSR in the 30s, in which 3.3 million people actually did die according to the Soviet government of the time. He was just trying to point a finger back at the U.S. to take some blame off Stalin.

Look, the bourgeoisie lie. We know that. But this is a relatively open society. If there were two million (or seven million), there would be evidence everywhere. We wouldn't need some "researcher" on the Russian equivalent of FOX News telling us. There would be mas graves. There would be historical markers. Your grand parents or great grand parents would have told you stories of bodies in the streets. There would be photographic evidence. The communist parties of the time would have mentioned it. It is simply beyond belief that everyone in the U.S. would simply have neglected to mention such a massive death toll.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

The only people that by a faire sounting can bee considered killed by the actual ideology of Communism is a couple of fascists, scabs, landlords, union busters, contra-rev soldiers/officers and terrorists. And if they are the once that makes up for the numbers of 100 million I just gonna be proud.

[Ocean Seal]

No, you're right, Stalin didn't contribute to 20 million deaths!

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper-says-20-million-died-as-victims-of-stalin.html



Thank you Stalin and Mao for ruining the word "Communism."

Even those that dispute the 20 million figure agree that Stalin was responsible for mass murder.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/


Oh wow so a Gorbachev era state newspaper said Stalin did bad things. That makes it as reliable as Faux news.

[Misanthrope]

We better catch this communism fellow and put him behind bars for good.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

The Democide Project claims sixty million died in Mao's China during the famine there.

Isn't Democide a term coined by that anti-communist insane libertarian scoundrel Rummel?

It's worth noting his research model consists of reading numbers of deaths in some anti-communist literature he might come across and looking for the most outrageous and highest claim he can find for any event during a history, and then adding them up to get his ridiculous numbers, which he states at +61 million for the SSSR and +73 million for Mao-era China. :rolleyes:

Also he wrote a vile poorly written book series about generic characters (with obligatory hollywood romance) going back in time to kill the evil dictators before they got anywhere...

[DarkPast]

Isn't Democide a term coined by that anti-communist insane libertarian scoundrel Rummel?

It's worth noting his research model consists of reading numbers of deaths in some anti-communist literature he might come across and looking for the most outrageous and highest claim he can find for any event during a history, and then adding them up to get his ridiculous numbers, which he states at +61 million for the SSSR and +73 million for Mao-era China. :rolleyes:

Also he wrote a vile poorly written book series about generic characters (with obligatory hollywood romance) going back in time to kill the evil dictators before they got anywhere...

Yes it is. He also coined ridiculous terms like "dekamegamurderer" :rolleyes:

A good example of his "scholarship" is this:
The figure on the supposed number of casualties by "megamurderer" Josip Broz Tito is an exact copy of the estimated number of Yugoslav casualties of WWII (1,072,000).

A good article debunking Rummel's methods is Tito's Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis of Rummel's Work on Democide. Author: Tomislav Dulić. Published in: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 2004)

An excerpt from another article critical of Rummel's numbers on the Soviet Union:

"In a series of nine chapters Rummel then explains how he reaches the figure of sixty-one million dead, and despite the complex tables and intricate computations, his explanation is quite unsatisfactory. Some general points first: Rummel uses no Russian-language sources and cites a variety of secondary sources as if they were all of equal worth, when some are scholarly and some far from it. He also assumes that the entire labour camp population was innocent: for Rummel, deaths in labour camps while serving a prison sentence are legitimate elements in what he calls 'democide' and much space is devoted to computing death rates in camps, yet some of those who died in this way were common criminals or actual Nazi collaborators, while a camp death rate of twenty-six per cent seems hard to credit, even at the height of Stalinism."Rummel is at his least contentious when dealing with collectivization and purges.""Ironically, given Rummel's rather naive mission to show the utter inhumanity of 'Marxism', his own figures can be turned against him."
(Geoffrey Swain. Reviewed work: Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R. J. Rummel. Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Oct 1991)

[chegitz guevara]

Isn't Democide a term coined by that anti-communist insane libertarian scoundrel Rummel?

Yes. I find him completely useless for understanding the real history of our movement, but for my method of pointing out how much more monstrous the reality of capitalism is than their fevered delusions of communism, it's useful.

Basically, let them say the worst about us, then point out how their reality is worse than what they say about us, then point out the real facts about us as well. It won't shut them up, but anyone who may be watching may start questioning the official story.

[ComradePonov]

Remmember, any and all unnatural death(s) that ever occured under a "communist" state is directly because of Marxist thought and communism.

Inversely, all crimes and illegal acts carried out by individual capitalists are single acts which are independant from the principles of capitalism. As a result, capitalism can do no wrong.

[HammerAndSickle1]

Does it really matter? World War II was started by capitalists, 60 million dead (20 million dead in the Soviet Union) add up the totals from the other wars, US interventions, and I'm sure Capitalism has killed as many or more

[Apoi_Viitor]

Quoting RT is like quoting The National Enquirer. And that article is absolute shite. We already tore it apart on RevLeft. All it means is that seven million less people were born than were expected to have been born, because if seven million people starved to death, this country couldn't have hidden it. Our grandparents would have told us about one out of every twenty people dying.

But aren't famine statistics regarding the Great Leap Forward, etc. the same? When scholars say "30 million people died" between 1958-1961, don't those figures come from calculating actual demographic trends versus expected ones?

[Nox]

How many did "communism" kill from the early half of the 1920's through 1991??

Zero. :marx:


On the other hand, Capitalism killed tens if not hundreds of millions during that same period :thumbdown:

[The Intransigent Faction]

First off, to those who've said that it's the people that kill, not the system: there is some truth to this, but it misses the point. People's actions are the result of their material conditions, hence the socioeconomic system in which people live triggers certain behaviours leading to deaths.

Next, while it's true that Stalinist societies and leaders weren't communist, and we shouldn't be apologists for harm done by these regimes, it's also important for a proper understanding of history to show how the death tolls are grossly inflated and misattributed by Western Cold War propaganda, if simply to encourage people to re-think the official American capitalist version of 'history' and start questioning what they've been told, in order to more effectively draw attention to capitalist crimes. If people want to hold Leninist regimes accountable for their crimes, then okay, but communists must emphasize that capitalists have committed atrocities, and continue to do so. By showing people that neither handing power to state bureaucrats nor to private owners of the means of production will allow them freedom, we show that only by seizing control of these means themselves can the masses achieve a just and free society.

This has pretty much already been said, but there's a serious double-standard in holding "communism" (or more absurdly, Stalin personally) responsible for famine in Ukraine while ignoring the ongoing man-made famine in the modern "third world" and even in the more affluent countries. This doesn't justify Stalinism, but it shows capitalism is not some wonderful, prosperous alternative.

And "chegitz_guevara", in dismissing research just because it's from RT, aren't you doing the same thing that Stalinists do when presented with Western media reports about Stalinist atrocities?

[CHE with an AK]

How many did "communism" kill from the early half of the 1920's through 1991?
0. Ideologies don't kill people. People (and angry bears) kill people.

As for Communists, I'm sure they killed some people who mostly deserved it.




As for the sources and claims, I don't need them.
Did you perhaps attend (Glenn) Beck's online University?




Historians like Kenneth Clark? Like the John Birch Society?
Exactly! I'm amazed at the right-wing bullshit that users get away with posting on these forums. It's like the only way to get restricted is to make fun of clubbing 'bi-racial' 'transgendered' seals. :confused:




Anarchism 0
It's easy to keep your hands clean when you're a minor irrelevant footnote. :p For the record, the Zoroastrian death toll during the Middle-Age Crusades is fairly low too.




I never plan to read the black book of communism.
If you can read French, I'd recommend The Black Book of Capitalism. It places their death toll at 147,000,000 during the same time frame.

Evil Communism, 47 % less deadly than capitalism :thumbup:




Stalinism is responsible for between 60 and 100 million deaths.
Why aren't you a restricted member by now?
Somebody give me the mod boom stick! http://forum.falloutstudios.org/style_emoticons/cncre/pimp_smile.gif





population decline is evidence enough ... The same holds for Mao's China.
China's Population


(1949) when Mao took over ~ 550 million


(1976) when Mao died ~ 900 million


... famine and mass murder must do wonders for population growth.

[Ismail]

It's worth noting that most of the deaths that occurred under, say, Stalin were the result of the material conditions of the USSR itself. Such was the case in, say, the Great Purges (see Getty's article "Mass Terror and Stalinist Governance in the Late 1930s") and also in collectivization. For instance in an April 26th, 1932 letter sent by Stalin on agricultural conditions in the Ukrainian SSR, he said, "You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation in villages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU, what are they doing?" ("Famine in the USSR: 1929-1934: New Documentary Evidence (http://www.russianembassy.org.za/special/famine.html)," 47.)

The thing to note, though, is that collectivization itself was meant to put an end to the periodic famines that ravaged the peasantry of the Russian Empire. Collectivization was to come with mechanized agriculture on a coordinated basis to ensure that there would be few food shortages. It was the same with industrialization which was meant among other things to ensure that the Soviets could fend for themselves against an imperialist attack, and obviously the German invasion proved the correctness of this policy.

A lot of the "deaths by communism" are of this nature. The other deaths, of course, are based on class struggle in which the worst thing that can be said is that some people were wrongly accused of being things that they weren't, such as landlords, capitalists, former collaborators in a prior anti-communist regime, etc. Then finally you have people who just attribute "deaths by communism" to people like Pol Pot (even though after the Vietnamese invasion in 1979 the Khmer Rouge at once received covert backing from the USA and postponed the "building of socialism" for "tens or hundreds of years" to fight the new pro-Soviet government.)

[DarkPast]

If you can read French, I'd recommend The Black Book of Capitalism. It places their death toll at 147,000,000 during the same time frame.

Evil Communism, 47 % less deadly than capitalism :thumbup:


I've not read the The Black Book of Capitalism, but from what I've heard it blames WW2 solely on capitalism, and doesn't count the 100+ million famine deaths in 20th century India. What a waste - if we're playing the numbers game, a quick google search for statistics about famine and poverty will immediately prove capitalism killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century alone, and continues to kill millions each year.

[Anti Propaganda]

Authortitian communist regimes like the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong's China, and the Khime Rouge killed a lot of people.
Communism is more like capitalism than Socialism.

[CHE with an AK]

Communism is more like capitalism than Socialism.
E_ff6rV9YAY

:confused:

[miltonwasfried...man]

How many people has "God" killed is a better question.

[chegitz guevara]

But aren't famine statistics regarding the Great Leap Forward, etc. the same? When scholars say "30 million people died" between 1958-1961, don't those figures come from calculating actual demographic trends versus expected ones?

Exactly. However, in the 1930s famine, there are documented deaths by the Soviet government we're relying upon. What happened in the GLF, we will never know, I suspect.

It's fairly certain, however, that the demographic hole in the U.S. is due entirely to less births, as the communists and socialists would have been all over that if there had been millions, or even tens of thousands, dying in the streets from hunger and other famine related causes.

[chegitz guevara]

And "chegitz_guevara", in dismissing research just because it's from RT, aren't you doing the same thing that Stalinists do when presented with Western media reports about Stalinist atrocities?

I don't reject RT because I don't like the implications of what it says. I reject RT because they engage in sensationalist journalism with little regard for the facts. Basically, anything RT claims needs to be corroborated by other sources before I trust it.

It's perfectly valid for MLs not to trust the Western sources of stories about the Purges and famine, if they were the only source of claims. The problem is, the claims by Western governments have been backed up by the Soviet's own archives. Sure, Conquest was full of shit with his wild claims of 20 million dead, but when the archives show that there were 3.3 million dead from the famine, and that Moscow refused to change the grain requisition policy for a year, despite commissars in the field pointing out there was a famine, we can reasonably conclude that there actually was a famine.

And so you'll notice, nearly every time you talk to an ML about the famine, they immediately start going after Conquest, and how his sources were Nazis, etc. They simply refuse to acknowledge that Stalin's own government recorded more than three million dead.

When they do acknowledge it, like Ismail, they refuse to acknowledge that in the modern world, famines don't happen because of bad harvests, they happen because of bad policies. The Soviets, at the time, recognized it was their policy of forced grain requisitions and collectivization, during the bad harvests, that were causing the famine. The commisars in the field were begging Moscow to reverse the policy, which it did, after a year.

It was not material conditions that caused three million+ people to die in the USSR. It was Stalin's policies.

[Aspiring Humanist]

Communism has never existed so zero
Stalinism on the other hand

[RedMarxist]

Both "Black Books" are biased. Attributing such things as WWII to capitalist related deaths is just silly-The causes of the war were far more complex than simply imperialism.

I for one am SICK of people assuming that my ideology murdered X Millions of people just because they heard it in Cold War Propaganda. The fact that the US aided Pol Pot is DAMNING in itself-it shows how Stalinist leaders only cared about holding onto power and will never actually 'build socialism.'

quick fact about me: my favorite periods of history are the American Civil War and the Communist period of history/Cold War.

From studying both, we can see that imperialism/capitalism/communism[fort he cold war] had very little to do with the two respective wars. Sure ideology both affected the causes, but they were not the root cause. The Civil War was Slavery and Southern Preservation of their way of life(plantations, antebellum, etc), and the Cold War(ideological differences, 'spreading the revolution', 'containing the spread' etc)

[DarkPast]

@RedMarxist: you may want to have a look at Lenin's "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism".

[Leftie]

"
Stalinism, did kill around 100 million.

You do realize that's like two thirds of the USSRs population at the time?

[UnknownPerson]

Communism didn't kill anyone. Rampant authoritarianism did.

Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were responsible for mass-murder because they were authoritarian and the power was concentrated in the hands of an individual or at most, of a small minority. As a rule of thumb, the more people are aware of the abusive actions, the less likely they are to happen, because people could stop them by disrupting the completion of such an action.

There's no cause and effect link between communism and mass murders, but there is a perfect logical cause and effect link between rampant authoritarianism and mass murder. Mass murder is far more likely to happen with authoritarian regimes in power for the reasons I stated.

[Comrade Gwydion]

so, you just accept the allegation that millions were killed at the hands of socialist governments but brush them off as 'stalinism' without even looking at the sources or claims?

Personally, I don't believe the claims made about the former soviet governments: As said, I highly doubt Stalin had weather-controlling superpowers and used them to cause famine.

On the other hand, neither do I feel terribily responsible for defending a (group of) regime(s) wich has barely no relevance to my ideology.

[maskerade]

Both "Black Books" are biased. Attributing such things as WWII to capitalist related deaths is just silly-The causes of the war were far more complex than simply imperialism.

I for one am SICK of people assuming that my ideology murdered X Millions of people just because they heard it in Cold War Propaganda. The fact that the US aided Pol Pot is DAMNING in itself-it shows how Stalinist leaders only cared about holding onto power and will never actually 'build socialism.'

quick fact about me: my favorite periods of history are the American Civil War and the Communist period of history/Cold War.

From studying both, we can see that imperialism/capitalism/communism[fort he cold war] had very little to do with the two respective wars. Sure ideology both affected the causes, but they were not the root cause. The Civil War was Slavery and Southern Preservation of their way of life(plantations, antebellum, etc), and the Cold War(ideological differences, 'spreading the revolution', 'containing the spread' etc)

I don't know much about American history, but I was under the impression that the war wasn't just about slavery but also about wage-slavery. Either way, it is directly related to Capitalism, albeit manifested in other causes.

[RedMarxist]

uh, stop blaming capitalism for EVERYTHING. capitalism IN ITSELF did not DIRECTLY CAUSE the American Civil War.

Slavery, wage-slavery, disagreements between the Republicans(formally known as Whigs) and Democrats(who by the way mostly supported slavery, not to defend republicans though), the expansion of slavery into the territories won from Mexico, etc.

My sources: Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era.

you cant go about blaming capitalism for every war, death, and injustice. Its very simplistic to do this. likewise, you cannot blame socialism for everything.

[UnknownPerson]

uh, stop blaming capitalism for EVERYTHING. capitalism IN ITSELF did not DIRECTLY CAUSE the American Civil War.

Slavery, wage-slavery, disagreements between the Republicans(formally known as Whigs) and Democrats(who by the way mostly supported slavery, not to defend republicans though), the expansion of slavery into the territories won from Mexico, etc.

My sources: Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era.

you cant go about blaming capitalism for every war, death, and injustice. Its very simplistic to do this. likewise, you cannot blame socialism for everything.





Capitalism takes a great deal of the blame.

Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

This can be almost entirely attributed to the capitalist mode of production.

[maskerade]

uh, stop blaming capitalism for EVERYTHING. capitalism IN ITSELF did not DIRECTLY CAUSE the American Civil War.

Slavery, wage-slavery, disagreements between the Republicans(formally known as Whigs) and Democrats(who by the way mostly supported slavery, not to defend republicans though), the expansion of slavery into the territories won from Mexico, etc.

My sources: Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era.

you cant go about blaming capitalism for every war, death, and injustice. Its very simplistic to do this. likewise, you cannot blame socialism for everything.





Right, because I just blamed capitalism for everything. And ignoring capitalism as a major cause of the American Civil war in order to avoid appearing simplistic is intellectually dishonest.

[RedMarxist]

I'm not ignoring it. I do accept that it PARTLY caused the Civil War, it was just not as big as Slavery, which one could argue was a capitalist thing(kind of was), but what I mean is you can't Blame Capitalism solely.

You also tell me you don't know a lot about American History. Figures.

I'm proud, VERY PROUD, to be American. I know what you will say-your a "nationalist", "fascist", or "overly patriotic." But goddammit this nation WAS FOUNDED ON A REVOLUTION, bourgeois yes but a revolution against an imperialist power(Great Britain) nonetheless. at the time we were the most free nation on Earth. Our economy became strong, our military even stronger. we were king of the world. I'm not proud of genocide or [our] own imperialism. But I am proud to be born and raised here.

I do acknowledge that the ONLY way to have a world revolution is to stage a second American Revolution. Impossible-perhaps, but necessary. I do also recognize that this nation has deviated from its revolutionary ideals and must be, at all costs, be put "back on the right track", only socialist.


The American People Will Stand Up!

[AnonymousOne]

This picture I think, expresses the general sentiment any Revolutionary Leftist feels when asked to defend the actions of the Soviet Union, or any "socialist" country.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y274/ngoisaodo/socialist_apology.jpg

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

This picture I think, expresses the general sentiment any Revolutionary Leftist feels when asked to defend the actions of the Soviet Union, or any "socialist" country.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y274/ngoisaodo/socialist_apology.jpg

What's wrong with plastic surgery? Without it there would be many people who would still be disfigured. It's not just celebrities and rich people who benefit from it.

[maskerade]

I'm not ignoring it. I do accept that it PARTLY caused the Civil War, it was just not as big as Slavery, which one could argue was a capitalist thing(kind of was), but what I mean is you can't Blame Capitalism solely.

You also tell me you don't know a lot about American History. Figures.

I'm proud, VERY PROUD, to be American. I know what you will say-your a "nationalist", "fascist", or "overly patriotic." But goddammit this nation WAS FOUNDED ON A REVOLUTION, bourgeois yes but a revolution against an imperialist power(Great Britain) nonetheless. at the time we were the most free nation on Earth. Our economy became strong, our military even stronger. we were king of the world. I'm not proud of genocide or [our] own imperialism. But I am proud to be born and raised here.

I do acknowledge that the ONLY way to have a world revolution is to stage a second American Revolution. Impossible-perhaps, but necessary. I do also recognize that this nation has deviated from its revolutionary ideals and must be, at all costs, be put "back on the right track", only socialist.


The American People Will Stand Up!

I'd reconsider. there are things to be proud of as an American, but surely not military and economic might, which directly facilitated the genocide and imperialism you dislike. Also there was nothing free about America when it was founded, it was a slave state and remained so for a long time.

[RedMarxist]

I'm not PROUD of military and economic might, I'm just stating the facts. WE HAD THE STRONGEST, but it did lead to those things you mentioned above.

It was free-if you were a white male(something I am not proud of). but for all intents and purposes we were the MOST free for THAT TIME PERIOD.

My inner Civil War enthusiast tell me this: That the Confederates should have won. I know that really is a loaded statement, but think about it. The Union, Led by Lincoln, vowed to CRUSH any hit of rebellion against the State. When the South rose up, the vast army of the Union was unleashed upon a weaker nation.

if the people rose up today, only nationwide and fighting for socialism, the vast armies of the Union would be unleashed upon them

[ebony123]

Communism has been present for so long. And a lot of reported deaths has happened since then.

[A Marxist Historian]

I hardly think the page number sum should be taken into account for anything. Also, I own this book and I like it and let me tell you why. I like it because I think it's a giant collection of the mistakes we have made (but the keyword here would be presumably). Even if you disagree with the book's main thesis and disagree with a specific section of the book, you can always fact check it, find it's source, look it up, etc.

The book is simply a pack of lies, as one or two of the contributors admitted subsequently to its publication. And no, it's not that easy to fact check it, as it was done, unfortunately, by skilled historians working from original sources.

Thus for one random example I know that its accusations against Kirov of allegedly committing mass murder in the Caucasus during the Civil War are lies, because I have read Alla Kirilina's definitive biography of Kirov in the original Russian, where she proves definitively what bullshit that was.

But I am a Russian/Soviet historian, so I know that kind of stuff. No way a layman could.

The very title reveals what the purpose of publication was. It's taken from the famous Black Book of Nazi Crimes, Ilya Ehrenburg's great documentary exposition of mass murder against Jews, which Stalin suppressed as it didn't fit the party line.

The purpose of the book is essentially Holocaust Revisionism, to get across the idea that Stalin was worse than Hitler. And there was a big scandal when it was first published and Italian fascists had a book promo tour to promote the book and its authors, as useful fascist propaganda.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

No one claimed seven million people starved to death. Whose position are you attacking?. According to DigitalHistory, there were so many accounts of people starving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief!

And if you accept the 7-10 million demographic loss figure (which you seem to) then what do you speculate was the cause? Does poverty make people less horney? I suppose you can get out of the trap by claiming the malnutrition caused a vast number of miscarriages and stillbirths, rather than actual deaths.

Yes, starvation does make people less interested in sex. Every famine in human history has always been associated with a huge drop in the birthrate. Only one of the causes of that being miscarriage and stillbirths, also closely associated with famine. And infant mortality too of course.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Exactly. However, in the 1930s famine, there are documented deaths by the Soviet government we're relying upon. What happened in the GLF, we will never know, I suspect.

It's fairly certain, however, that the demographic hole in the U.S. is due entirely to less births, as the communists and socialists would have been all over that if there had been millions, or even tens of thousands, dying in the streets from hunger and other famine related causes.

Millions sounds high, but yes there were tens of thousands of people dying from hunger in the USA during the great depression, and yes the communists and socialists were all over that.

This even crept into Hollywood. Ever seen Grapes of Wrath? Nobody *quite* dies explicitly from hunger in the movie, but some characters come close.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't reject RT because I don't like the implications of what it says. I reject RT because they engage in sensationalist journalism with little regard for the facts. Basically, anything RT claims needs to be corroborated by other sources before I trust it.

It's perfectly valid for MLs not to trust the Western sources of stories about the Purges and famine, if they were the only source of claims. The problem is, the claims by Western governments have been backed up by the Soviet's own archives. Sure, Conquest was full of shit with his wild claims of 20 million dead, but when the archives show that there were 3.3 million dead from the famine, and that Moscow refused to change the grain requisition policy for a year, despite commissars in the field pointing out there was a famine, we can reasonably conclude that there actually was a famine.

And so you'll notice, nearly every time you talk to an ML about the famine, they immediately start going after Conquest, and how his sources were Nazis, etc. They simply refuse to acknowledge that Stalin's own government recorded more than three million dead.

When they do acknowledge it, like Ismail, they refuse to acknowledge that in the modern world, famines don't happen because of bad harvests, they happen because of bad policies. The Soviets, at the time, recognized it was their policy of forced grain requisitions and collectivization, during the bad harvests, that were causing the famine. The commisars in the field were begging Moscow to reverse the policy, which it did, after a year.

It was not material conditions that caused three million+ people to die in the USSR. It was Stalin's policies.

All basically true, but be it noted that forced grain requisitions were unavoidable, as otherwise it would have been the workers not the peasants who starved to death.

So if Stalin had simply acceded to Ukrainian requests to ease up on the peasants, that would only have changed who starved to death, not how many.

Which is the biggest condemnation of forced collectivization you could possibly find in my book.

What should Stalin have done? He should have acknowledged that there was a huge famine descending on the Soviet Union due to his forced collectivization policy, reversed it, and appealed for help to the world.

Had he done so, he would have shortly found himself ousted, and probably in prison. In my book, yet another reason why he should have done that. Not in Stalin's for some reason.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

uh, stop blaming capitalism for EVERYTHING. capitalism IN ITSELF did not DIRECTLY CAUSE the American Civil War.

Slavery, wage-slavery, disagreements between the Republicans(formally known as Whigs) and Democrats(who by the way mostly supported slavery, not to defend republicans though), the expansion of slavery into the territories won from Mexico, etc.

My sources: Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era.

you cant go about blaming capitalism for every war, death, and injustice. Its very simplistic to do this. likewise, you cannot blame socialism for everything.





In fact, I'll go farther than Red Marxist. The capitalists were basically the good guys in the Civil War. It was a bourgeois revolution. Go rent Glory, and you'll see what I mean.

Marx sent Lincoln a congratulation message in the name of the First International on his re-election, and a number of German Marxist exiles became officers in the Union Army.

-M.H.-

[ColonelCossack]

Yes, I do. Stalinism wasn't Socialism. Maoism wasn't Socialism.

Cuba comes much closer to Socialism than they did and how many died in Socialist-Cuba? Almost none! Indeed, Cuban Socialism saved lives because malnutrition was eradicated.

As for the sources and claims, I don't need them. Historians have documented the 20 million that died in Stalin's U.S.S.R. Once you add in Mao's "Cultural Revolution," you have a massive figure.

Like I said though: Mao and Stalin weren't Socialists. So the answer to the above question is: ZERO.

ok, let's do some adding.
20 million "killed by stalin" + 25 million russian dead in WW2 = 45 million

I estimate the Russian population at that time to be around 100 million, but if anyone has any better figures please tell me because that is a total estimate. I don't actually know.

100 million-45 million= death of 45% of the Soviet population.

If this was true, it would have had various consequences;
a) Everyone would have lost almost half of their family and friends- more than enough to trigger a revolution in The USSR by 1945, which we know did not happen.
b) An enormous collapse of the soviet economy, rendering the soviet union completely incapable of being anywhere near the superpower it was in the latter 20th century.

Both of the above would probably have also happened right down to a loss of only 20%.

So, our two options are: 25 million soviet citizens in WW2, or Stalin did not kill 20 million.

[#FF0000]

The population was like 190 million by 1940. Estimating population numbers is a bad idea, I think.

[ColonelCossack]

^Well, then the loss of 45 million would probably mean a loss of around 24% or 25%- still, I think, to spark a revolution around 1945 because everyone including the army would have lost family members, and even with the USSR's massive oil reserves, would have probably stopped it from becoming a world superpower, not least because of the shock that would have been caused.

[A Marxist Historian]

^Well, then the loss of 45 million would probably mean a loss of around 24% or 25%- still, I think, to spark a revolution around 1945 because everyone including the army would have lost family members, and even with the USSR's massive oil reserves, would have probably stopped it from becoming a world superpower, not least because of the shock that would have been caused.

Right. And by the way, 190 million is about twenty million too high.

Then there is Rudy Rummel with his 60 million killed by Stalin estimate, which borders on the science fictional.

The figure of 20 million comes out of Robert Conquest's famous book, The Great Terror, published way back in the 1960s. Pretty much the original book on the subject in the Western world, at least the first one that much attention was paid to. Based on very little indeed.

The real source of the figure is that was then the usual estimate of the number of Soviet citizens who died in WWII, so Conquest came up with an equal number.

Since then the political climate has gone to the right in the capitalist world, so now the claim is that Stalin killed *more* than Hitler.

Even though the archives are open and the exact figure executed, a bit over a million and a half, is well known.

So Conquest, even before the archives opened facing a lot of challenges for his grotesquely huge figures, fastened on the Ukraine famine, in which he claimed some 10-12 million died. The actual figure for that is now fairly well known too, namely about two to three million in Ukraine (as this is politically extremely charged, a final exact estimate is *still* being argued over), another million and a half or so in the rest of the Soviet Union, and an unknown but large number in Kazakhstan, where you had a nomadic population with no censuses taken.

All more than gruesome enough for any sensible person to hate Stalin. But numbers like that don't carry out the objective of painting Stalin as worse than Hitler, to delegitimise any sort of communism, and perhaps to relegitimise Nazism a bit.

-M.H.-

[Kiev Communard]

I have already dealt with this issue before, and I would say once again that a total death toll of Stalin's period (including all famines, convicts' death from harsh conditions, etc.) is around 8-9 million, with 10 million the highest possible number. Of course, this is rather monstrous, but still pales in comparison with Hitler or the British colonizers in India/King Leopold in "Free State of Congo", etc.

[DinodudeEpic]

Mass murder requires the will to kill. Stalinist and Maoist leaders have killed loads of people. (A combination of all 'communist' regimes brings it to somewhere near 25-45 million. Less then the 80 million that died of Right-wing authoritarian ideologies.)

Also, famines don't count! Unless they are engineered to kill people.

Edit:Maybe I'm wrong...

[A Marxist Historian]

I have already dealt with this issue before, and I would say once again that a total death toll of Stalin's period (including all famines, convicts' death from harsh conditions, etc.) is around 8-9 million, with 10 million the highest possible number. Of course, this is rather monstrous, but still pales in comparison with Hitler or the British colonizers in India/King Leopold in "Free State of Congo", etc.

And let us not forget the *current* war in the Congo, first unleashed by Bill Clinton when he gave the go ahead to the dictator of Rwanda to invade the Congo and take whatever vengeance he pleased on the Hutu refugees.

The usual death toll estimates from this nightmare Clinton casually inflicted on the Congo with hardly a second thought is six million.

If you are going to ascribe all the victims of the Great Famine to Stalin, which is basically not unfair, then it is equally fair to ascribe all the victims of the Congo War to Clinton.

And of course there is the some million and a half people in Iraq who starved to death as a result of the blockade Clinton imposed on Iraq. He bears if anything *more* direct blame for that than Stalin bears for the Ukrainian famine.

Stalin at least tried to limit the consequences with policy changes in the spring of 1932, albeit too late. And he purged the bureaucrats responsible for the Kazakhstan disaster, for which he genuinely bears only indirect blame for, reason being that Stalin had little interest in Kazakhstan, so the local satraps could do whatever they wished.

The death toll in Iraq would have been even greater except that Clinton's imperial allies compelled him to loosen the policy and let food and medicines in, which Clinton resisted kicking and screaming.

-M.H.-

[Red_Struggle]

The fact that the US aided Pol Pot is DAMNING in itself-it shows how Stalinist leaders only cared about holding onto power and will never actually 'build socialism.'

How the fuck was Pol Pot a "Stalinist"? Hell, even Hoxha the super "Stalinist" considered him to be more in line with fascism than with Communism:

"In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena... The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service.

When the first conflicts broke out on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, the view of socialist Albania was, and the world is witness to this, that disagreements between the two neighbour countries should be resolved through talks and without the interference of the Chinese or Soviet social-imperialists. But this was not done. On the contrary, the Pol Pot group, incited by Beijing, brought out in Pnom Pen daily communiques in which they announced that thousands of Vietnamese were being killed by its army on Vietnamese territory....

But the question must be asked: Why do the Chinese imperialists allegedly have the right to defend the barbarous fascist Pol Pot group, and Vietnam does not have the right to support the revolutionaries and the people of Cambodia to build a free, independent and sovereign country?" - Selected Works Volume 6 pg. 419-420

[renzo_novatore]

Marxism did not kill 100 million people. Famines, hunger starvation - due to highly centralized inefficient bureaucratic control of the economy - killed 100 million people. Mao cannot be considered responsible for the deaths of what 3 million to 70 million people (seriously the numbers I've heard) - most of them died of starvation because of the mismanagement of the system.
And what about capitalism? Capitalism has starved a WHOLE lot more people than marxism ever did - capitalism has created far more famines - it's because of capitalism that 1 billion people live off of less than $2 a day - and you could really blame capitalism for the vast majority of wars that took place in the 20th century. Added all up - the numbers are far greater. I read from someone somewhere once that capitalism killed 1 billion people in the 20th century and this does not surprise me.

[A Marxist Historian]

How the fuck was Pol Pot a "Stalinist"? Hell, even Hoxha the super "Stalinist" considered him to be more in line with fascism than with Communism:

"In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena... The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service.

When the first conflicts broke out on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, the view of socialist Albania was, and the world is witness to this, that disagreements between the two neighbour countries should be resolved through talks and without the interference of the Chinese or Soviet social-imperialists. But this was not done. On the contrary, the Pol Pot group, incited by Beijing, brought out in Pnom Pen daily communiques in which they announced that thousands of Vietnamese were being killed by its army on Vietnamese territory....

But the question must be asked: Why do the Chinese imperialists allegedly have the right to defend the barbarous fascist Pol Pot group, and Vietnam does not have the right to support the revolutionaries and the people of Cambodia to build a free, independent and sovereign country?" - Selected Works Volume 6 pg. 419-420

Yes. This was so obvious that even Enver Hoxha, who happened to have no political axe to grind for either side, could see it.

Trotskyists consider China, the former Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Albania for that matter as Stalinist degenerated or deformed workers states.

A regime which evacuates the capital and forces the entire proletariat at gunpoint out into the rice paddys and kills 'em in large numbers is simply not a workers state of any conceivable kind. By definition.

Nor was Pol Pot a Stalinist, as a Stalinist believes in building socialism in one country. And whatever Pol Pot was trying to build, it clearly wasn't socialism even in his own mind. Which is why when the Vietnamese drove him into the jungle, he could turn into a petty diamond smuggler working his diamond mines at gunpoint to make a profit without blinking an eye.

-M.H.-

[marl]

Communism itself, as an ideology, does not kill; capitalism itself, as an ideology, does not kill. Bureaucrats in Communism - be it Stalinist or Cambodian Maoist - do, however, cause death (by purging competition, racism against minorities, making failed leaps which ultimately hurt their workers). We can say that Stalin's regime can attributed with death, but we cannot say that Stalinism or communism can be attributed with killings. Capitalism's lack of regulations can lead to a lack of worker's rights, child labour, "witch hunts" so to speak, but is it the fault of capitalism as an ideology? No, it's the fault of the individual under capitalism. Capitalism allows this to happen. The communism in which supposed killings happen allows it to happen. It's an indirect fault of the ideology.

When arguing, and someone brings up those killed under communism, you can use their own lack of logic against them.

[RedMarxist]

In fact, in Indonesia President Eisenhower turned a blinded eye to the MASSIVE 1 MILLION death toll, as the local regime sought to kill every last communist. Cold War Politics in all its glory.

so, how can President Obama GASP at the mere 2,000+ death toll in Syria. If this was the cold war era, He would have turned a blind eye as long as the Reds did not take over.

I'm so sick of this fucking system[capitalism], that I would, if I could, destroy. Ain't we all sick of it? As far as I'm concerned, "Communism" during the Cold War period and before was a "learning process", in which theories, some failed and some successful, were tested.

We can do better next time. We have too.

Good news though. In Greece, they've agreed,(I do believe so) to not only nationalize the banks, but put the industry/big businesses under democratic worker control. Now all they have to do is kick the rotten Greek Regime out. Then, AND ONLY THEN, the revolution will spread like a virus all across Europe.

[Red_Struggle]

In Then, AND ONLY THEN, the revolution will spread like a virus all across Europe.

You mean Spectre :D

[RedMarxist]

specter virus same thing :laugh:

Think about it. the Bureaucracy under Stalin and other future leaders post-Stalin era was a mess. Leonid Brezhnev had, basically, freaking sports cars, SPORTS CARS, when according to The Red Flag only 10% of the population/soviet households had cars.

and, furthermore, an argument can be made that America/Europe's bureaucracy is just as bad. They too, despite residing over a mostly open society, are riding around in sports cars and hoarding a ton of money. I'm looking at you presidential candidate of 2008 John McCain with your freaking mansions!

which is why the Greek people are simply moving history forward, ridding humanity of an outdated system. Parliamentary Democracy. What with its "corporate sponsorship" and rigged elections. I extend my sympathies to the Greek people. May history be on your side.

[azlea]

How many did "communism" kill from the early half of the 1920's through 1991? Now I'm no idiot, and am well aware that 100 million people was a drastically inflated number.

How many did "it" really kill?
it;s hard to say how many people communism killed because countries like the usa impose embargos, and sanctions on communist countries which starve millions of people to death. so while people die in communist countries, it could very well be because of the sanctions placed by capitalist countries in europe, or the america.

[A Marxist Historian]

In fact, in Indonesia President Eisenhower turned a blinded eye to the MASSIVE 1 MILLION death toll, as the local regime sought to kill every last communist. Cold War Politics in all its glory.

so, how can President Obama GASP at the mere 2,000+ death toll in Syria. If this was the cold war era, He would have turned a blind eye as long as the Reds did not take over.

I'm so sick of this fucking system[capitalism], that I would, if I could, destroy. Ain't we all sick of it? As far as I'm concerned, "Communism" during the Cold War period and before was a "learning process", in which theories, some failed and some successful, were tested.

We can do better next time. We have too.

Good news though. In Greece, they've agreed,(I do believe so) to not only nationalize the banks, but put the industry/big businesses under democratic worker control. Now all they have to do is kick the rotten Greek Regime out. Then, AND ONLY THEN, the revolution will spread like a virus all across Europe.




That's a purty big "all they have to do." There doesn't seem to be much news from Greece lately, and certainly none on Revleft.

I'm afraid that, in the absence of a revolutionary party, much in the way of agreement on a revolutionary program, or real solid mass democratic workers' organizations on the soviet model, now that Syntagma Square has been dispersed, that the mass rebellion in Greece has run out of gas, like in Tunisia and Egypt.

There will be a Round Two without doubt, and in Tunisia and Egypt too. But in the intervening period much work needs to be done.

-M.H.-