Rating: 
Summary: Baby steps.
Review: I have to say that I was really startled when I started reading this book! From the book's title and the reviews I read on Amazon, I was expecting a work with the point of view that communism as a system is evil; here's why/how. To be honest, my only concern was that the book would be too black and white, with an emphasis on gloating over telling what is among the most important stories of the 20th century. This couldn't have been farther from the truth. If you are looking for a book to unambiguously recount the evils of communism in the last century, this isn't the one. The introduction points out that *all* of the authors are former communists or "fellow travelers", and that there is still much disagreement between them on whether it is appropriate to compare communist regimes with fascism. As the argument is outlined, the authors aren't sure if enough people have been killed or imprisoned by communist regimes to warrant calling them evil! The argument is finally resolved that (while well meaning), these regimes probably do qualify as evil because of the overwhelming number of people they killed & imprisoned. However, even this assertion is wracked with much hand wringing. Unfortunately, this wishy-washy perspective permeates the entire work.
Throughout the book, the perspective of the authors persistently detracts from the history they set out to tell. Far too much space is devoted to the infighting within the party. This is especially true when it comes to describing atrocities of the various regimes; too much attention is spent on victims of the various purges, and not enough (sometimes none) is given to non party members. To be fair, I don't think this was deliberate. Party infighting is the life's blood of communists worldwide; during the authors' lives as communists/fellow travelers, slight deviations from the party line would have lead to severe discipline, even though they didn't actually live within a communist state. It is understandably difficult for them to realize that this is where their bias lies or even that normal people mostly don't care about minor deviations to the party line. However, the end result is that essential perspectives are consistently overlooked or under explained, while the book is much too long and often quite boring. As much as the introduction and the histories themselves troubled me, it was the conclusion that really blew me away! The conclusion deals with the question of why communism has always ended up in the form of murderous tyranny; is this something nested within Marxist theory itself or specific to the implementation? In answer to this question, the author comes up with a new twist to the tired old myth exonerating Marxism. For many years the party line has been that Marx & Lenin were good-hearted peace loving people, but that Stalin had perverted the system. Courtois' retread of this old argument admits that Lenin was as much to blame as Stalin, but that Marx was opposed to dictatorship, violence, etc. This is the old "Communism hasn't been tried yet" argument, with a slightly different face. This is of course nonsense; Marxism is a hate filled, envy driven ideology founded on violence theft and slavery, and (despite Courtois' desperate assertions otherwise) Marx wasn't a fan of either democracy or constitutions safeguarding human rights. After reading this, the main question I have is why did the authors put so much energy into appearing to condemn communism (including the incisive title) only to shy away at every key moment? Giving the authors the benefit of the doubt, I would attribute their timidity to the difficulty of breaking with as seductive a world view as communism provides all at once. From this point of view, The Black Book of Communism could be seen as the first baby steps of recovering communists. While not ready to admit that Communism itself is evil, they are willing to confront that the regimes who operated under it's name were often brutal, murderous, etc. Assuming this is the case, I extend my personal kudos to the authors and wish them the best of luck as they continue down the path to entirely rejecting this vicious philosophy. However, this isn't a book most people will benefit from. If you are a recovering communist looking to glancingly confront your past this book is for you. Otherwise, I would recommend any of the excellent books available by Richard Pipes or Robert Conquest instead of this one.
Rating:
Summary: Baby Steps
Review: I have to say that I was really startled when I started reading this book! From the book's title and the reviews I read on Amazon.com, I was expecting a work with the point of view that communism as a system is evil; here's why/how. To be honest, my only concern was that the book would be too black and white, with an emphasis on gloating over telling what is among the most important stories of the 20th century. This couldn't have been farther from the truth. If you are looking for a book to unambiguously recount the evils of communism in the last century, this isn't the one. The introduction points out that *all* of the authors are former communists or "fellow travelers", and that there is still much disagreement between them on whether it is appropriate to compare communist regimes with fascism. As the argument is outlined, the authors aren't sure if enough people have been killed or imprisoned by communist regimes to warrant calling them evil! The argument is finally resolved that (while well meaning), these regimes probably do qualify as evil because of the overwhelming number of people they killed & imprisoned. However, even this assertion is wracked with much hand wringing. Unfortunately, this wishy-washy perspective permeates the entire work. Throughout the book, the perspective of the authors persistently detracts from the history they set out to tell. Far too much space is devoted to the infighting within the party. This is especially true when it comes to describing atrocities of the various regimes; too much attention is spent on victims of the various purges, and not enough (sometimes none) is given to non party members. To be fair, I don't think this was deliberate. Party infighting is the life's blood of communists worldwide; during the authors' lives as communists/fellow travelers, slight deviations from the party line would have lead to severe discipline, even though they didn't actually live within a communist state. It is understandably difficult for them to realize that this is where their bias lies or even that normal people mostly don't care about minor deviations to the party line. However, the end result is that essential perspectives are consistently overlooked or under explained, while the book is much too long and often quite boring. As much as the introduction and the histories themselves troubled me, it was the conclusion that really blew me away! The conclusion deals with the question of why communism has always ended up in the form of murderous tyranny; is this something nested within Marxist theory itself or specific to the implementation? In answer to this question, the author comes up with a new twist to the tired old myth exonerating Marxism. For many years the party line has been that Marx & Lenin were good-hearted peace loving people, but that Stalin had perverted the system. Courtois' retread of this old argument admits that Lenin was as much to blame as Stalin, but that Marx was opposed to dictatorship, violence, etc. This is the old "Communism hasn't been tried yet" argument, with a slightly different face. This is of course nonsense; Marxism is a hate filled, envy driven ideology founded on violence theft and slavery, and (despite Courtois' desperate assertions otherwise) Marx wasn't a fan of either democracy or constitutions safeguarding human rights. After reading this, the main question I have is why did the authors put so much energy into appearing to condemn communism (including the incisive title) only to shy away at every key moment? Giving the authors the benefit of the doubt, I would attribute their timidity to the difficulty of breaking with as seductive a world view as communism provides all at once. From this point of view, The Black Book of Communism could be seen as the first baby steps of recovering communists. While not ready to admit that Communism itself is evil, they are willing to confront that the regimes who operated under it's name were often brutal, murderous, etc. Assuming this is the case, I extend my personal kudos to the authors and wish them the best of luck as they continue down the path to entirely rejecting this vicious philosophy. However, this isn't a book most people will benefit from. If you are a recovering communist looking to glancingly confront your past this book is for you. Otherwise, I would recommend any of the excellent books available by Richard Pipes or Robert Conquest instead of this one.
Rating: 
Summary: "The Gulag Archipelago" was better
Review: There are two sorts of people who will own a copy of the "Black Book...": American "conservatives" and the people who go to library book-sales twenty years hence. As any bibliophile will tell you, the French intelligentsia "rediscover" the crimes of "communism" every two decades or so; the "Black Book's..." predecessor in the late 1970's was a book by a Parisian red-diaper baby entitled "Barbarism With a Human Face." However, unlike most anti-communist books (mostly memoirs or works of history), the French work goes after every goverment that functioned under the label communist. This puts the tome under strain, because some of the governments it lists weren't Marxist-Leninist-Maoist is the strictist sense. The Sandinista government of Nicaragua, unlike the USSR or neighboring El Salvador had free (unrigged) elections in 1984, a fact the book never mentions. It also fails to mention the illegal and devastating Contra war conducted against Nicaragua by the US. If gaps like these can appear, what else may be on the fritz?
But let us move to the homeland of Stalinism, a subject which takes up nearly a third of the "BBC." Solzhenitsyn did a better job of discussing the camp system, the mind of the Tcheka/GPU/OGPU/NKVD/KGB man (known as the "bluecaps" for their headgear), the train ride to camp, the mindless labor, the zeks (prisoners), etc. because he lived it. When I started "The Gulag Archipelago" I thought it was going to be a chore; but those 1000+ pages were a quick read. Aleksandr made it work. The "BBC" writer wrote a monograph. The answer as to why the Holocaust is more well-known then what went on in Eurasia is quite simple: media. There are more movie clips of Treblinka than any Chinese laogai, Soviet gulag, etc. The minute 1993 rolled around, movies like "The Killing Fields" lost relevance, because we hoped that the Asian and Carribean branches of "communism" would come around. A decade later and we have a massive trade deficit with China, Cuba hangs on, and the 45th parallel stands.
Rating: 
Summary: Calculating
Review: As the first major work to detail and account the unbelievable magnitude of crime perpetrated by communist regimes around the world, the original of this translation apparently caused an uproar in French political society. Although, as its subtitle indicates, it isn't intended as a complete historical overview of communist states, it does a very good job of introducing them to a reader who is only vaguely familiar with their reality. The book is organized geographically into parts written by authors who obviously know their respective specialties, although the fact that so many authors contributed to it leads it to suffer just a little from a lack of cohesion (structure and narrative style, presence of bibliographies). In my opinion, the first part on the Soviet Union is excellent-- the parts on Western European, Eastern European, Asian, and Third-World communism are also highly informative.
I would certainly recommend this without reservation to anyone with an interest in understanding the practice of communism, regardless of their historical background.
Rating:
Summary: SHODDY SCHOLARSHIP
Review: One will be sufficiently anti-Communist by the time one finishes reading the sections on Russia and China. HOWEVER, upon reading the extreme exagerations posited by Pascal Fontaine in the section on Latin America, it is clear that the agenda of this book is to justify the atrocities carried out by the West in order to "contain" Communism during the Cold War. The author claims that Che Guevara was a "graduate of the school of terror", that the Sandinistas had a totalitarian regime, that Castro has executed between 15,000 and 20,000 people, that the Sandinistas had 20,000 political prisoners in 1983, and mentions the Contras without mentioning their U.S. backing! To say that the Sandinistas were Communist in the first place is wrong, and that totalitarianism was even approached is ludicrous. The author uses only 7 French articles and 4 French books to come to these conclusions, while ignoring the thousands of pieces of scholarly literature available from the Americas which would absolutely refute what he says. The chapters on Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, and Africa also exagerate and speculate to a large degree, while ignoring the atrocities sponsored and carried out by the U.S. to "contain" their Commy ways. The only reason to read this book would be to arm yourself for arguments with the right-wingers.
Rating:
Summary: Will be an eye opener for some
Review: The critical reviews of this book are more interesting than the book itself. "Black Book" presents a chronicle of victims of communist terror regimes from the USSR to Cambodia. We can't really know the exact numbers, but we know they were very large indeed. How do we know this? We know it from the considerable body of scholarship on the subject to the personal testimony of the people who managed to survive. I have talked to people who for example, managed to survive the great terror famine in the Ukraine in the early 1930's. How did they survive? By burying food, and then hiding the evidence of the stash by dumping the excess dirt deep in the forest. Is it important to know exactly how many died in this induced famine? No. What's important is that it happened and that some people are still making excuses for it. The critical reviews follow the usual response from the apologists for Communism. Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. The problem for them is that cat's really out of the bag. Former communist leaders, KGB, GRU etc officials admit it's all true.
Rating: 
Summary: Marxism not the only deadly form of coercive government
Review: The Black Book of Communism was written BY Marxists. They were stunned and appalled at what they found in Soviet archives and elsewhere. Too bad the Major Media is as willingly forgettful on this topic as the general public is.
The holocaust-deniers (Marxist chapter) submit reviews here, and so you may want further independent sources for the Black Book's findings. If so, see Dr. R. J. Rummel's books "Death by Government" and "Power Kills." Rummel's website, with 5,000+ pages of searchable material,... It's never Mother Theresa who claws her way to the top of a government, because SAINTS aren't interested in commanding a million 18 year olds with automatic weapons. Psychopaths are, and so THEY are often the ones who run nations.
"That government is best, which governs least." - Jefferson
"That government is best, which governs not at all." - Thoreau
Every argument in favor of big government, of any kind, is just silly when put next to the FACT of government's frequent mass murder throughout history, and continuing in the present day.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive and Thought-Provoking (2.5 stars)
Review: I must admit, after deciding to read a true anticommunist book, I saw that this book is filled with some fact. Myself being a Marxist, I completely (and always have) opposed the actions of the failed dictators in these so-called "Communist" countries. I could go on with a political debate, however I do realize that this is infact a book review and not the right place for it. Most, not all numbers are over-inflated, while the book goes little into the Marxist ideology and the positive change that a People's revolution brought to a nation after years of fascist or feudal dictatorships and monarchies. I gave this book a three because it is not complete fact. Aside from picking on the dictators, the author goes after the peaceful advocates of socialism such as Albert Einstein, Eugene Debs, and Rosa Luxemeborg. This book is furthermore very right-wing revisionist and does not take part the victims of American counter-revolutionary mini-missions of the second half of the 20th century to prevent the rise of socialism. Including the American-led coup on a DEMOCRATICALLY-ELECTED socialist leader Salvador Allende of Chile. The victim counts are also very opinionated. As I stated before, I completely dispise people such as Joseph Stalin who turned a dream into hell and murdered millions; dispite that, the victim counts are over-maximized and frankly are more than double the actual victim totals. My final opinion is that the main strongpoint of this book is good reference if you need to refer to specific actions of dictators.
Rating:
Summary: The West and the Challenge of Relativity
Review: As an enlightened individual with a master's degree in modern history it saddens and appals me to read such drivel as The Black Book of Communism. I am shocked still further at the number of dupes and buffoons who have been convinced by this crude polemic. It may interest readers to know that the co-authors of this book have since denounced Ms Courtois' vastly inflated figures as an exploded fiction. It may also interest readers to know that The Black Book of Capitalism that was published a year later has been refused publication by Harvard University Press. So who lives in a totalitarian society then? I would first like to make it clear that I am not a Communist. Neither am I an ill-educated simpleton whose knowledge of history amounts to knowing that the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066. I am simply an individual with an interest in historical integrity. The first serious point that needs to be made about this book is that the assertion that 100 million were 'murdered' by Communism is frankly insane. It's so ridiculous that serious people aren't even discussing it. Anyone who has even taken a basic course in moral philosophy at university level will know the fundamental difference between 'killing' or 'murdering' such as the Nazis practiced during the Holocaust and 'letting die' through the negligence or incompetence of the political system. This is such a basic point I find it hard to believe that it actually needs to be made. The fact of the matter is that millions of Russian peasants died in the 1920s due to the incompetence of Stalin and the inadequacies of the Soviet economic system. That doesn't mean they were 'murdered'. The number of victims during Stalin's reign of terror was 700,000. A third of these were political prisoners (mostly socialists and anarchists) while the rest were common criminals. The fact that the United States is the only civilised Western country that routinely murders it's own civilians should not be forgotten by readers. The assertion that 65 million died as a result of famine in China (they were not 'murdered') is simply crude speculation. Curtis alleges that she had access to archival evidence. In the case of China this is a blatant fraud. It has clearly escaped everyone's attention that the regime in China has not fallen and the state archives closed to Western scrutiny. How then was the figure of 65 million arrived at? Well, put simply, she made it up. Most serious historians put the figure somewhere between 20 and 40 million. Suppose we now apply the methodology of the authors of the Black Book to the non-Communist Capitalist world. Since India's transition to a democratic capitalist state in 1949 more have died every 8 years as a result of poverty, malnutrition, lack of basic healthcare etc than the total number of people who perished in the Chinese Great Famine. That's 100 million deaths every 8 years as a result of the inadequacies of the capitalist system. Or should we say that capitalism 'murders' more than 100 million impoverished Indians every decade. If we had any interest in consistency we certainly would. It's even more ludicrous that the authors should state that 1 million were killed by Communists in Vietnam while neglecting to mention that 3 million perished at the hands of the United States during it's wars in Indo-China during that period. I am not trying to excuse the 1 million attributable to Communism, but I am routinely amazed at the West's inability to face the challenge of relativity. The Black Book of Capitalism was published a year later in Europe. Since the Industrial Revolution in England (according to the writers) more than 300 million people have died as a result of capitalist governments (due to a combination of poverty and imperialist wars). That's 300 million 'murdered' by capitalism- and the death toll is still rising! Thus, applying the framework set out by Cortois et al in a comparative analysis of the non-Communist world, the only rational conclusion one can draw is that liberal capitalism is a greater evil than orthodox Communism.
Rating:
Summary: The critics of this book are justification to read it.
Review: The fact that the only people finding much trouble with this book are apologists for communism and communist atrocities says a lot. Never is there an admission from these folks that communism was bad enough. There is always a rejoinder that Nazism really was more horrendous, as if "better than Nazism" is some kind of moral justification for communist sympathies. Or, increduously, they assert that the free system of democracy and capitalism that protects their individual rights to express such distorted views, and affords them the prosperity to spend their leisure time getting all dreamy about communism, is somehow worse. These are the views of a deranged group of true believers who, in their ideal world, would have the rest of us living under precisely the regimes that this book describes in bloody detail. Fortunately, it is unusual to come across these people in person unless you live somewhere like Berkeley. But all sorts of lefties come out of the woodwork on the Internet, particularly when the topic being discussed is a book like this that so utterly decimates the pillars of their belief system.
|
