Mass killings under communist regimes

This article needs attention from an expert in History. Please add a reason or a talk parameter to this template to explain the issue with the article. WikiProject History may be able to help recruit an expert. (September 2009)

This article or section possibly contains synthesis of material which does not verifiably mention or relate to the main topic. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. (August 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (August 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Some Communist regimes carried out large scale mass killing, notably the Soviet Union under Stalin, the Chinese cultural revolution, and the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Academic debate has centred around the similarities and differences in the factors causing of these three cases.

This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (October 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In his book "Final Solutions: The Causes of Mass Killings and Genocides", Benjamin Valentino defines mass killings as "the intentional killing of a significant number of the members of any group of noncombatants (as the group and its membership are defined by the perpetrator)."^[1]p4 Valentino admits that he is finessing Rummel's controversial notion of democide.^{[1]p4 at fn6}. Wayman and Tago describe the academic focus as being on mass killing of political, economic, ethnic, religious, or racial groups in order to eliminate the group or sharply reduce its numbers, noting that "the UN convention on genocide in order to gain support among the communist nations during the Cold War, this treaty-based definition left out the killing of economic and political groups."^[2]. Harff and Gurr use the term "politicide" to describe genocide as understood by the Genocide Convention plus the killing of a political or economic group.^[3] Regarding the use of democide and politicide data, Wayn and Tago have shown that depending on the use of democide (generalised state-sponsored killing) or politicide (eliminating groups who are politically opposed) as the criterion for inclusion in a data-set, statistical analyses seeking to establish a connection between mass killings can produce very different results, including the significance or otherwise of regime type.^[2]

Some authors have sought to make a connection between the events and communist ideology. Robert Conquest stressed that Stalin's purges were not contrary to the principles of Leninism, but rather a natural consequence of the system established by Lenin.^{[citation needed] [clarification needed]} Political scientist John N. Gray argues that "that the political creation of an artificial terror-famine with genocidal results is not a phenomenon restricted to the historical context of Russia and the Ukraine in the Thirties, but is a feature of Communist policy to this day, as evidenced in the sixties in Tibet and now in Ethiopia. The socialist genocide of small, "primitive" peoples, such as the Kalmucks and many others, has been a recurrent element in polices at several stages in the development of Soviet and Chinese totalitarianism." Gray goes on to state "that communist policy in this respect faithfully reproduces classical Marxism, which had an explicit and pronounced contempt for "small, backward and reactionary peoples - no less than for the peasantry as a class and a form of social life".^[4]. Cambridge literary historian George Watson argued in The Lost Literature of Socialism^[5] that analyses of the writings of Engels and others shows that"[t]he Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism, which in advanced nations was already giving place to capitalism, must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire nations would be left behind after a workers' revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age, and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history."^[5] He also claimed that from 1840 until the death of Hitler "everyone who advocated genocide called himself a socialist, and no exception has been found."^{[6][full citation needed]} Watson's claims have not been echoed in scholarly articles on the history of genocide and have been criticised by Robert Grant for "dubious evidence", arguing that "what Marx and Engels are calling for is [...] at the very least a kind of cultural genocide; but it is not obvious, at least from Watson's citations, that actual mass killing, rather than (to use their phraseology) mere 'absorption' or 'assimilation', is in question."^[7](p558) Grant also claims Watson's concept of 'socialism' is "at best nebulous...and at worst, anything at odds with his own classical liberalism."^[7](p559)

Academic debate regarding the common features of mass killing and other legal measures in communist countries originates in the political advocacy of Lemkin in advocating the genocide convention.^[8](p557) Lemkin's hobby-horse was the international ratification of a Genocide Convention, and he consistently bent his advocacy towards which ever venue would advance his objective.^[8](p555-6) Associating with the US government, Central European and Eastern European emigre communities, Lemkin bent the term genocide to meet the political interests of those he associated with, and in the case of communities of emigres in the US, funded his living.^{[8](p554-556)} In this way Lemkin was enmeshed in an anti-Soviet political community, and regularly used the term "Communist genocide" to refer to a broad range of human rights violations—not simply to mass-killings of ethnic groups—in all the post 1945 communist nations, and claimed that future "genocides" would occur in all nations adopting communism.^{[8](p551, 553-6)} Lemkin's broad application of his term in political lobbying degraded its usefulnes, "Like King Midas, whatever Lemkin touched turned into “genocide.” But when everything is genocide nothing is genocide!"^[8](p555-6) Additionally, Lemkin displayed both a racialism against Russians who he believed "were incapable of “digesting a great number of people belonging to a higher civilization,”"^[8](p552) and made broad use of his term in the political service of the USA's anti-communist position in the 1950s. However, Lemkin has been praised for being the first to use the comparative method into the study of mass violence.

Valentino theorises that mass killings occur for strategic reasons, and that all communist mass killings are united by a single theoretical descriptor: that mass killing is readily chosen as the optimum strategy by small leaderships to successfully economically dispossess large numbers of people.^{[1](pp34–37)} Valentino's own typology indicates this as a subset,^{[1](Table 1)}, and his theory is explicitly a general theory of mass killing.^[1](p1)

He additionally particularises this in a later work: that a common structure unites Soviet, Chinese and Cambodian mass killings: the defence of a utopian and shared version of radical communism.^[9] Valentino's theory has been used in other works, but is contentious, as other authors claim there is no common link between various incidents where communists have been responsible for mass killing.^[10]

The Black Book of Communism is a collected set of commissioned essays by academics on the theme of repression in Communist controlled states. It claims to detail "Leninism's 'crimes, terror, and repression' from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989."^{[11](p x)} The editor, Stéphane Courtois' object of analysis is the soviet-style system of states.^[12](p727) Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality, "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government,"^[11](p4) and proceeds with a claim that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.^[11](p2) However, Courtois admits that the project is to conduct a nineteenth century moral history, "whereby historians performed research more for the purpose of passing judgement than understanding the issue in question."^[11](p10) This is also the position of Malia who claims in the Foreword that Communist criminality caused mass killings is the shared analytical tendency of the collection,^{[13](xvii–xviii)}, culminating in the judgement that Communism or "an absolute end to inequality" must be "accorded its fair share of pure evil."^[13](xx) Accepting that this practice of history is non-standard, Courtois justifies his capacity to judge by recourse to an ideology rooted in Catholic individualism which is capable of exceeding its own "certain hypocracy".^[11](p29) Courtois establishes a corrupted cradle theory: that bolshevism perverted the communist movement. ^[12](727) He proceeds to elucidate two general reasons for barbarity: racialist Russian exceptionalism and the War Experience; neither, as he observes, "explain the Bolsheviks' propensity for extreme violence." ^{[12](727-735)}. Courtois retreats from analysis and conducts a moralism of Lenin claiming simply that power was Lenin's aim and his ideology was fundamentally voluntarist, and universally totalising both intellectually and in social conflict. ^{[12](727-741)} Ultimately, Courtois' conclusion falls into the error he accuses Trotsky and Lenin of, "a strong tendency to develop general conclusions based on the Russian experience, which in any case was often exaggerated in [Trotsky's] interpretations." ^[12](742) Courtois treatment of East Asian communism is cursory, and follows his corrupted cradle thesis, drawing no distinction between Vietnamese re-education structures and Kampuchean mass killings, and does not address other communist societies or parties.^[12](748) Courtois acknowledges but dismisses this deficiency in his theory, "a linkage can always be traced to the pattern elaborated in Moscow in November 1917." ^[12](754) The Black Book of Communism's correctness has been disputed based on claims of serious methodological, interpretive, narrative and (to some commentators) ideological flaws.

During the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks unleashed the Red Terror to suppress opposition, which culminated in the summary execution of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people" by the political police, the Cheka.^{[14][15][16][17]} Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation.^[18] One of the largest massacres of the civil war^[19] involved the shooting and hanging of some 50,000 White officers and civilians after general Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel was put down at the end of 1920.^[20][21]

During the civil war, the Bolshevik policy of decossackization was the first example of Soviet leaders deciding to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory."^[22] In the early months of 1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed^[23][24] and many more deported after their villages were razed to the ground.^[25]

Following the solidification of Stalin's position as leader of the Soviet Union, there was an escalation in detentions and executions of various people, climaxing in 1937-38 (a period known as the "Yezhovshchina"), and continuing until Stalin's death in 1953. It has estimated that between 950 thousand and 1.2 million were killed during the Yezhovshchina.^[26]. Arrests were typically made citing counter-revolutionary laws, which included failure to report treasonous actions and, in an amendment added in 1937, failing to fulfill one's appointed duties.

Robert Conquest, in his 1968 book The Great Terror stated that the executions of former Communist leaders was a minor detail of the purges, which caused 20 million deaths including man-made famines. For the 40th anniversary edition of the book, he reduced his estimate to 13-15 million.^[27]

Within the Soviet Union change in agricultural policies and severe droughts caused the Soviet famine of 1932–1933.^{[28][29][30][31]} The famine was most severely in the Ukrainian SSR, which until 1930s enjoyed benefits of the Bolshevik policy of Ukrainization. A significant portion of the famine victims (3-3.5 million) were the Ukrainians. At the time, the Soviet government tried to suppress information about the famine and the Western powers demonstrated their indifference (in contrast to what happened during famines of 1921 and 1947). Some scholars have argued that the Stalinist policies that caused the famine may have been designed as an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism, and thus may fall under the legal definition of genocide.^{[28][29][32][33][34]}

Economist Michael Ellman argues that the actions of the Soviet regime from 1930-34, from the standpoint of international criminal law, "clearly constitutes . . . a series of crimes against humanity" and perhaps even genocide, but only if a more relaxed definition of the term is adopted. Regarding the Kazakh case^{[clarification needed]}, Ellman believes this could be an example of ‘negligent genocide,’ but this falls outside the scope of the UN convention.^[35]

Writer and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed in April 2008 that the accusation of the Holodomor being genocide was created decades later after the event and Ukrainian efforts to have the famine recognized as genocide is an act of historical revisionism that has now surpassed the level of Bolshevik agitprop.^[36][37]

The Soviet government during Stalin's rule conducted a series of deportations on an enormous scale which significantly affected the ethnic map of the USSR. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official reasons for the deportations, rightly or wrongly. Deportations took place under extremely inhumane conditions, often by cattle truck, with hundreds of thousands of deportees dying en route.^[38] Some experts estimate the number of deaths from the deportations could be as high as 1 in 3.^[39][40] People from the following ethnic groups were forcibly resettled for various reasons: Volga Germans, Poles, Balts, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Koreans, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks. Large numbers of Kulaks, regardless of their nationality, were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia.^[38] Regarding the fate of the Crimean Tatars, Amir Weiner of Stanford University writes that the policy could be classified as "ethnic cleansing". But it is concluded that the policy was not genocide because there was no intent to kill off the Crimean Tatars in an attack.^[41] In the book Century of Genocide, Lyman H Legters writes "We cannot properly speak of a completed genocide, only of a process that was genocidal in its potentiality."^[42]

According to professor Michael Ellman, the National operations of the NKVD, which targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities), such as Poles, Ethnic Germans, Koreans, etc, may constitute genocide as defined by the UN convention.^[35] A total of 350,000 were arrested and 247,157 were executed.^[43] Of these, the Polish operation appears to have been the largest, with 140,000 arrests and 111,000 executions out of a (Polish) population of 636,000. Stalin biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore concurs with this view, and referred to the Polish operation as 'a mini-genocide.'^[44]

Regarding the persecution of clergy, Professor Michael Ellman states "...the 1937 – 38 terror against the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and of other religions (Binner & Junge 2004) might also qualify as genocide as defined in the Convention (‘killing members of the group . . . with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a . . . religious group’)."^[35] Citing church documents, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev has estimated that over 100,000 priests, monks and nuns were executed during this time.^[45]

In 1918, during the Red Terror, the Bolsheviks executed nearly 3,000 Orthodox clergymen of all ranks.^[46] Another 8,000 were killed during the conflict over church valuables in 1922.^[47] During this conflict, Lenin himself stated: "The greater the number of the representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the reactionary clergy that we will manage to execute in this affair, the better."^[48]

See also the Cultural Revolution

In China, it is alleged that Mao Zedong's policies and political purges, such as the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and Zhen Fan, Shu Fan movement, brought about the deaths of some 40 to 70 million people.^[49][50]

In 1960, drought and other bad weather affected 55 percent of the cultivated land in China, while in the north an estimated 60% of agricultural land received no rain at all.^[51] The Encyclopædia Britannica yearbooks from 1958 to 1962 also reported abnormal weather, followed by droughts and floods. Close planting, the idea of Ukrainian pseudo-scientist Trofim Lysenko.^[52] had been implemented. The density of seedlings was at first tripled and then doubled again, according to the theory, plants of the same species would not compete with each other. In practice they did, which stunted growth and resulted in lower yields. Lysenko's colleague's theory encouraged peasants across China to plow deeply into the soil (up to 1 or 2 meters). They believed the most fertile soil was deep in the earth, allowing extra strong root growth. However, useless rocks, soil, and sand were driven up instead, burying the topsoil. Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, had reorganized the workforce; millions of agricultural worker had joined the iron and steel production workforce.

As a result of these factors, year over year grain production in China dropped by 15% in 1959. By 1960, it was at 70% of its 1958 level. There was no recovery until 1962, after the Great Leap Forward ended.^[53]

According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. Unofficial estimates vary, but are often considerably higher. Yang Jisheng, a former Xinhua News Agency reporter who spent over ten years gathering information available to no other scholars, estimates a toll of 36 million.^[54]

Professors and scholars of the famine, who do not use the word 'genocide' to describe it, but rather more neutral terms, such as "abnormal deaths", have estimated that they number between 17 million to 50 million. Some western analysts such as Patricia Buckley Ebrey estimate that about 20-40 million people had died of starvation caused by bad government policy and natural disasters. J. Banister estimates this number is about 23 million. Li Chengrui, a former minister of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, estimated 22 million (1998). His estimation was based on Ansley J. Coale and Jiang Zhenghua's estimation of 17 million. Cao Shuji estimated 32.5 million.

See also Khmer Rouge

Sociologist Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era".^[55]

The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War.

At least 200,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge^[56] (while estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 million).^[57]

Democratic Kampuchea experienced serious hardships due to the effects of war and disrupted economic activity. According to Michael Vickery, 740,800 people in Cambodia in a population of about 7 million died due to disease, overwork, and political repression.^[58] Other estimates suggest approximately 1.7 million and it is described by the Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program as "one of the worst human tragedies of the last century."^[59] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After 5 years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,112,829 victims of execution."^[58] Following the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge they received aid and assistance from the United States government. While the US was aware of their genocide they supported them as a check on Vietnamese power.^[60]

In 1997 the Cambodian Government asked the United Nations assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal.^[61][62][63] The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007.^[61] On 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not charged with genocide. He will face Cambodian and foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal.^[64]

While Ethiopia's former ruler Mengistu has been convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by an Ethiopian court for his role in the Red Terror, and the highest ranking surviving member of the Khmer Rouge has been charged with those crimes,^[64][65][66] no communist country or governing body has ever been convicted of genocide. Charges of genocide have been brought against a Khmer Rouge leader. One conviction for genocide has been obtained against a communist leader, Ethiopian Mengistu Haile Mariam;^[67] Ethiopian law is distinct from the UN and other definitions in that it defines genocide as intent to wipe out political and not just ethnic groups. In this respect it closely resembles the distinction of politicide.^[68]

In 2002 the Ukranian President Kuchma signed a presidential decree asserting that the famine of 1932-33 had in fact been 'genocide' against the Ukrainian nation. A parliamentary resolution in 2003 reiterated this view. In November 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill branding the Holodomor an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.^[69] As of March 2008, the Ukraine and between eleven and nineteen other governments.^[70] The Russia government vehemently rejects the idea of the Holodomor as genocide., as well as in Ukraine which was accused of politicization of the tragedy, outright propaganda and fabrication of documents^[71]

In March 2005, the Polish Sejm unanimously requested Russia to classify the Katyn massacre, the execution of over 21,000 Polish POW's and intellectual leaders by Stalin's NKVD, as a crime of genocide.^[72] Alexander Savenkov of the Prosecutor's General Office of the Russian Federation responded: "The version of genocide was examined, and it is my firm conviction that there is absolutely no basis to talk about this in judicial terms."^[73]

In August 2007, Arnold Meri, an Estonian Red Army veteran and cousin of former Estonian president Lennart Meri, faced charges of genocide by Estonian authorities for participating in the deportations of Estonians in Hiiumaa in 1949.^[74][75] The trial was halted when Meri died March 27, 2009, at the age of 89. Meri denied the accusation, characterizing them as politically motivated defamation: "I do not consider myself guilty of genocide.", he said.^[76]

• Criticisms of Communist party rule
• Forced settlements in the Soviet Union
• Gulag
• Mass graves in the Soviet Union
• Victims of Communism Memorial
• Anti-communist mass killings

• Barron, John (1977). Murder of A Gentle Land, The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia. Reader's Digest Press. p. 240. ISBN 0-88349-129-X. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Boldur-Latescu, Gheorghe (2006). The Communist Genocide in Romania. Nova Science Publishers. p. 239. ISBN 9781594542510. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Courtois, Stephane (1999). [[The Black Book of Communism]]: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. p. 858. ISBN 0-674-07608-7. {{cite book}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Deker, Nikolai (1958). Genocide in the USSR: studies in group destruction. Scarecrow Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Pipes, Richard (2003). Communism: A History. Modern Library Chronicles. p. 175. ISBN 9780812968644. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Rummel, Rudolph (1997). Death by government. Transaction Publishers. p. 496. ISBN 1-56000-927-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) at WWW.Hawaii.edu
• Sarup, Kamala (September 5, 2005). "Communist Genocide In Cambodia" (PDF). Genocide Watch. Retrieved September 30, 2009. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Valentino, Benjamin A (2005). "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia". Final solutions: mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century. Cornell University Press. pp. 91–151. ISBN 0801472733. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Watson, George (1998). The Lost Literature of Socialism. Lutterworth press. ISBN 9780718829865.
• Weiss-Wendt, Anton (2005). "Hostage of Politics Raphael Lemkin on "Soviet Genocide"" (PDF). Journal of Genocide Research (7(4)): 551–559. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)