http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Book_of_Co... The introduction, by editor Stéphane Courtois, states that that "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government". Using unofficial estimates he cites a death toll which totals 94 million, not counting the "excess deaths" (decrease of the population due to lower than the expected birth rate). The breakdown of the number of deaths given by Courtois is as follows:
* 20 million in the Soviet Union
* 65 million in the People's Republic of China
* 1 million in Vietnam
* 2 million in North Korea
* 2 million in Cambodia
* 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe
* 150,000 in Latin America
* 1.7 million in Africa
* 1.5 million in Afghanistan
* 10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international communist movement and communist parties not in power."(p. 4)
The book claims that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movement, including Nazism. The statistics of victims includes executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation, and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labor. It does not include "excess deaths" due to higher mortality or lower birth rates than expected of the population.
A more detailed partial listing of some of the repressions committed in the Soviet Union under the regimes of Lenin and Stalin described in the book include:
* the executions of tens of thousands of hostages and prisoners, and the murder of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922 (See also: Red Terror)
* the Russian famine of 1921, which caused the death of 5 million people
* the extermination and deportation of the Don Cossacks in 1920
* the murder of tens of thousands in concentration camps in the period between 1918 and 1930
* the Great Purge which put out of existence almost 690,000 people
* the deportation of 2 million so-called "kulaks" from 1930 to 1932
* the deaths of 4 million Ukrainians (Holodomor) and 2 million others during the famine of 1932 and 1933
* the deportations of Poles, Ukrainians, Balts, Moldavians and Bessarabians from 1939 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1945
* the deportation of the Volga Germans in 1941
* the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1943
* the deportation of the Chechens in 1944
* the deportation of the Ingush in 1944.(p. 9-10)(See also: Population transfer in the Soviet Union)
[edit] Body
Most of the book then describes repressions. The book, among other sources, used material from the (then) recently opened KGB files and other Soviet archives. The material is divided into five parts:
* A State against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union.
* World Revolution, Civil War, and Terror. Chapters on the Comintern, the Spanish Civil War, and Communism and Terrorism.
* The Other Europe: Victim of Communism. Chapters on Poland and Central and Southeastern Europe.
* Communism in Asia: Between Reeducation and Massacre. Chapters on China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
* The Third World. Chapters on Latin America, Ehtiopia, Angola, Mozambique, and Afghanistan.
[edit] Conclusion
The conclusion by Stéphane Courtois attempts to explain the repressions.
[edit] Reception
Unsurprisingly, because of the nature of the subject matter it deals with, the book has evoked a wide variety of responses, ranging from enthusiastic support to severe criticism