2nd motion

8/22/2019 2nd Motion

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EU rejects eastern states' call to outlaw denial of crimes by communist regimes

Eastern European states wanted Soviet crimes 'treated according to the samestandards' as those of Nazi regimes

The European commission has rejected calls from eastern Europe to introduce a so-

called double genocide law that would criminalise the denial of crimes perpetrated bycommunist regimes, in the same way many EU countries ban the denial ofthe Holocaust.Last week six countries wrote to Viviane Reding, the European justice commissioner,calling for the "public condoning, denial and gross trivialisation of totalitarian crimes"to be punished.

Foreign ministers from Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romaniaand the CzechRepublic said communist crimes "should be treated according to the samestandards" as those of Nazi regimes, notably in those countries with Holocaust deniallaws.

But the EU executive will say in a report due tomorrow that opinion is too divided onthe matter and that there is no legal basis allowing Brussels to act.

"There is no consensus on it. The different member states have wildly differingapproaches," EU justice spokesman Matthew Newman told the Guardian. He saidthe commission takes the issue "very seriously", but: "At this stage, the conditions tomake a legislative proposal have not been met. The commission will continue to keepthis matter under review."

The east European countries point to the EU's ability to make laws relating to"particularly serious" cross-border crimes and a separate EU decision permitting the

crafting of rules targeting racism and xenophobia.But the commission says neither legal instrument mentions totalitarianism and rejectsthe idea of double genocide. "The bottom line is, obviously, what they did washorrendous, but communist regimes did not target ethnic minorities," said Newman.

According to Lithuania, whose foreign minister leads the campaign to create a newlaw, the EU's understanding of genocide should be extended to include crimesagainst groups defined by "social status or political convictions".

Andrius Grikienis, a spokesman for Lithuania's mission to the EU, said: "During thefirst years of Soviet occupation, Lithuania lost more than 780,000 of its residents.

444,000 fled Lithuania or were repatriated, 275,697 were deported to the gulag orexile, 21,556 resistance fighters and their supporters were killed and 25,000 died onthe front."

By comparison, he said: "More than 200,000 citizens of Jewish origin were killed byNazis and their collaborators."

The commission is also uneasy about wading into a highly controversial area. Anumber of western EU countries oppose the proposal, suggesting that it is a thinly-veiled attempt at rehabilitation of domestic collaborators while antisemitism remains alive issue on the streets and in the media in the east.

On 25 November, the ambassadors to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, of seven EUstates including the UK sent a letter to the country's president complaining about a
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newspaper article by an interior ministry historian, Petras Stankeras, that describedthe Holocaust as a "legend".

In the letter, they complained about how a court in May had ruled that the swastika isa "traditional Lithuanian symbol" while "spurious attempts are made to equate the

uniquely evil genocide of the Jews with Soviet crimes against Lithuania, which,though great in magnitude, cannot be regarded as equivalent in either their intentionor result".

Efraim Zuroff, the Nazi-hunter and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Israeloffice, describes the effort by the six eastern states as a "false symmetry".

"We have no problem with a day of commemoration for communist crimes, andindeed, something should be done, but the Holocaust was a unique tragedy inhistory," he said.

"For all the terrible crimes of the USSR, you can't compare the people who built

Auschwitz with the people who liberated it. Nazi Germany would probably not havebeen defeated if it weren't forRussia."

Communism vs Nazism

Communism and Nazism are two different political ideologies. They oppose

each other and one can come across numerous differences between the two.

Some people now a days do not see much difference between the two. But

this not true and the two are distinct in all aspects. The communists have a

different thinking of politics and economy than the Nazis.

Communism is a socio economic ideology that aims at a classless,

egalitarian, and a stateless society. The ideology is based on a common

ownership and it is the community that controls the resources or the means

of production. Nazism or National Socialism is a totalitarian ideology that

was practised by the Nazi Party or the National Socialist German Workers

Party.

Nazism became so popular under Adolf Hitler. Communist ideology can be

attributed to Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.

Communism stands for a free society where all are equal and every one can

participate in the decision making process. It stands for a class less society

and has no barriers of any religion, caste or state. A fascist political system,

Nazism stands for socialist policies but also ensures that a wealthy classstays at the helm of power.
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While Nazism believes in extreme nationalism, ethnic divisions and a firm

government, communism does not have such prepositions and it focuses on

equality. While communism is focussed on a classless society, Nazism is

focussed on a racist society. In German Nazis considered Aryan race to besuperior to all others.

While Communism is on the far left, Nazism is considered to be far right.

Communism can be said to be having foundations in some strong political

ideology. On the other hand, Nazism is not based on any strong political

ideology but only based on racial divide.

Summary:

1.Communism is a socio economic ideology that aims at a classless,egalitarian, and a stateless society. Nazism or National Socialism is a

totalitarian ideology that was practised by the Nazi Party or the National

Socialist German Workers Party.

2.Nazism became so popular under Adolf Hitler. Communist ideology can

be attributed to Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.

3.Communism stands for a free society where all are equal and every one

can participate in the decision making process. Nazism stands for socialistpolicies but also ensures that a wealthy class stays at the helm of power.

4. While Communism is on the far left, Nazism is considered to be far right.

Political violence and violent societies[edit]

Both Stalinism and Nazism utilized mass violence.[18]

Both the Stalinist Soviet Union and Nazi

Germany utilized internment camps led by agents of the state - the NKVD in the Soviet Union and the

SS in Nazi Germany.[18]

Both regimes engaged in violence against minorities based on xenophobia -

the xenophobic violence of the Nazis was outspoken but rationalized as being against "asocial"

elements while the xenophobic violence of the Stalinists was disguised as being against "sociallyharmful" elements - that was a term that targeted diaspora nationalities.

[19]

Both Stalin's Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were violent societies where mass violence was

accepted by the state, such as in the Great Terrorof 1937 to 1938 in the Soviet Union and the

Holocaust in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories in World War II.[20]

The Stalinist Soviet Union

established "special settlements" where the "socially harmful" or "socially dangerous" who included ex-

convicts, criminals, vagrants, the disenfranchized and "declassed elements" were expelled to.[21]

The

"special settlements" were largely in Siberia, the far north, the Urals, or other inhospitable

territories.[22]

In July 1933, the Soviet Union made a mass arrest of 5000 Romani people effectively on

the basis of their ethnicity, who were deported that month to the "special settlements" in Western

Siberia.[22]

In 1935, the Soviet Union arrested 160,000 homeless people and juvenile delinquents andsent many of them to NKVD labour colonies where they did forced labour.

[23]
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Similar to Nazism, Stalinism in practice in the Soviet Union pursued ethnic deportations from the

1930s to the early 1950s, with a total of 3 million Soviet citizens being subjected to ethnic-based

resettlement.[24]

The first major ethnic deportation took place from December 1932 to January 1933

during which some 60,000 Kuban Cossacks were collectively criminally charged as a whole with

association with resistance to socialism and affiliation with Ukrainian nationalism.[25]

From 1935 to

1936, the Soviet Union deported Soviet citizens of Polish and German origins living in the western

districts of Ukraine, and Soviet citizens of Finnish origins living on the Finland-Soviet Union

border.[25]

These deportations from 1935 to 1936 affected tens of thousands of families.[25]

From

September to October 1937, Soviet authorities deported the Korean minority from its Far Eastern

region that bordered on Japanese-controlled Korea.[25]

Soviet authorities claimed the territory was "rich

soil for the Japanese to till" - implying the Soviet suspicion that the Koreans could potentially join

forces with the Japanese forces to unite the land with Japanese-held Korea.[25]

Over 170,000 Koreans

were deported to remote parts of Soviet Central Asia from September to October 1937. These

ethnically-based deportations reflected a new trend in Stalinist policy a "Soviet xenophobia" based on

ideological grounds that suspected that these people were susceptible to foreign capitalist influence,

and based on a resrugent Russian nationalism.[25]

After Nazi Germany declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviet Union initiated another

major round of ethnic deportations. The first group targeted were Soviet Germans, between

September 1941 and February 1942, 900,000 people - over 70 percent of the entire Soviet German

community - were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia in mass operations.[26]

A second wave of mass

deportations took place between November 1943 and May 1944 in which Soviet authorities expelled

six ethnic groups (the Balkars, Chechens, Crimean Tartars, Ingush, Karachai, and Kalmyks) that

numbered 900,000.[27]

There were also smaller-scale operations involving ethnic cleansing of diaspora

minorities during and after World War II, in which tens of thousands of Crimean Bulgarians, Greeks,

Iranians, Khemshils, Kurds, and Meskhetian Turks were deported from the Black Sea and

Transcaucasian border regions.[27]

Two ethnic groups that were specifically targeted for persecution by Stalin's Soviet Union were the

Chechens and the Ingush.[27]

Unlike the other nationalities that could be suspected of connection to

foreign states that had their nationality, the Chechens and the Ingush were completely indigenous

people of the Soviet Union.[27]

Instead, the Soviet Union claimed that these peoples' culture did not fit

in with that of the Soviet Union as a whole - such as accusing Chechens of being associated with

"banditism" - and claimed that the Soviet Union had to intervene in order to "remake" and "reform"

their culture.[27]

In practice this meant heavily-armed punitive operations carried out against Chechen

"bandits" that failed to achieve its forced assimilation, resulting in Soviet authorities in 1944 carrying

out a massive ethnic cleansing operation that arrested and deported over 500,000 Chechens and

Ingush from the Caucasus to Central Asia and Kahzakstan in order to "relieve" the Russian minorities(30 percent of the population) of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR.

[28]The deportations of the Chechens and

Ingush also involved the outright massacre of thousands of people, and severe conditions placed

upon the deportees - they were put in unsealed train cars, with little to no food for a four-week journey

during which many died from hunger and exhaustion.[29]

German and Soviet soldiers during the official transfer ofBrest to Soviet control in front of picture of Stalin in the

aftermath of the invasion and partition of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.
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The main difference between Nazi and Stalinist deportations was in their purpose: while Nazi

Germany sought ethnic cleansing to allow settlement by Germans into the cleansed territory, Stalin's

Soviet Union pursued ethnic cleansing in order to remove minorities from strategically important

areas.[30]

Concentration camp s[edit]

Works by historians such as Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber and others in the 1980s compared the

policies ofAdolf Hitlerand Joseph Stalin, and drew a parallel between the concentration camp system

in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.[31]

The declaration both called for condemnation of communism, education about communist crimes,

prosecution of communist criminals by establishing an international court within the EU for communist

crimes, construction of a memorial to the victims of world communism, and reduction of pensions andsocial security benefits for communist perpetrators. The declaration stated that:

"Communist regimes have committed, and are in some cases still committing, crimes against

humanity in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in other countries where communism

is still alive"

"Crimes against humanity are not subject to statutory limitations according to international law;

however, the justice done to perpetrators of Communist crimes over the past 20 years has been

extremely unsatisfactory"

"We must not deny the tens of millions of victims of Communism their right to justice"

"Since crimes against humanity committed by the communist regimes do not fall under thejurisdiction of existing international courts, we call for the creation of a new international court with

a seat within the EU for the crimes of communism. Communist crimes against humanity must be

condemned by this court in a similar way as the Nazi crimes were condemned and sentenced by

the Nuremberg tribunal, and as the crimes committed in former Yugoslavia were condemned and

sentenced"

"Not punishing the communist criminals means disregard of and thus weakening of international

law"

"As an act of reparation and restitution, European countries must introduce legislation that

equalizes the pensions and social security benefits of perpetrators of communist crimes so that

they are equal to or smaller than those of their victims"

"As democracy must learn to be capable of defending itself, Communism needs to be condemned

in a similar way as Nazism was. We are not equating the respective crimes of Nazism and

Communism, including the Gulag, the Laogai and the Nazi concentration camps. They should

each be studied and judged on their own terrible merits. Communist ideology and communist rule

contradict the European Convention of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of

the EU. Just as we are not willing to relativise crimes of Nazism, we must not accept a

relativisation of crimes of Communism."

"We call upon EU member states to increase the awareness raising and education about crimes of

communism; we remind them of the need to implement, without further delay, the Resolution of

the European Parliament (2 April 2009) to mark 23 August as the European-wide Day of

Remembrance of the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes."
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"We call upon the European Commission and European Council of Justice and Home Affairs to

adopt a Framework Decision introducing a pan-European ban on excusing, denying or trivializing

the crimes of communism."

"The creation of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, as supported by the

European Parliament and the EU Council in 2009, must be completed at EU level. Individual

governments must live up to their commitments regarding the work of the Platform."

"As an act of recognition of the victims and respect for the immense suffering inflicted upon half of

the continent, Europe must erect a memorial to the victims of world Communism, following the

example ofthe memorial in the USA in Washington, D.C."[3]

Terminology

Communist regimes "Communist regimes" refers to those countries who declared themselves to be

socialist states under the Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist, or Maoist definition (in other words, "communist

states") at some point in their history.

Scholars use several different terms to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of

noncombatants.[3][4]

The following have been used to describe killing by Communist governments:

Genocide under the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide does not apply to the mass

killing of political and social groups. Protection of political groups was eliminated from the UN

resolution after a second vote, because many states, including Stalin's USSR,[5]

anticipated that

clause to apply unneeded limitations to their right to suppress internal disturbances.[6]

Politicide the term "politicide" is used to describe the killing of political or economic groups that

would otherwise be covered by the Genocide Convention.[7]

Manus I. Midlarsky uses the term

"politicide" to describe an arc of mass killings from the western parts of the Soviet Union to Chinaand Cambodia.

[8]In his book The killing trap: genocide in the twentieth centuryMidlarsky raises

similarities between the killings of Stalin and Pol Pot.[9]

Democide R. J. Rummel coined the term "democide", which includes genocide, politicide,

and mass murder.[10]

Helen Fein has termed the mass state killings in the Soviet Union and

Cambodia as "genocide and democide."[11]

Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago have shown the

significance of terminology in that, depending on the use ofdemocide (generalised state-

sponsored killing) orpoliticide(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.

[page needed][12]

Crime against humanity Jacques Semelin and Michael Mann

[13]believe that "crime against

humanity" is more appropriate than "genocide" or "politicide" when speaking of violence by

Communist regimes.[14]

Classicide Michael Mann has proposed the term "classicide" to mean the "intended mass

killing of entire social classes".[15]

Terror Stephen Wheatcroft notes that, in the case of the Soviet Union, terms such as "the

terror", "the purges", and "repression" (the latter mostly in common Russian) colloquially refer to

the same events and he believes the most neutral terms are "repression" and "mass killings".[4]

Mass killing this term has been defined by Benjamin Valentino as "the intentional killing of a

massive number of noncombatants", where a "massive number" is defined as at least 50,000intentional deaths over the course of five years or less.

[16]He applies this definition to the cases of
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regimes#cite_note-Totten-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murderhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democidehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Rummelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-9http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-8http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-harffgurr-7http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicidehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#Genocide_as_a_crimehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Conventionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_statehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_statehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on_Crimes_of_Communism#cite_note-3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Communism_Memorial


7/20

Stalin's USSR, the PRC under Mao, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, while admitting that

mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by regimes in North

Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa.[17]

Red Holocaust still small pile of stones, commemorating the victims of communism, as such the first memorial in

Germany (Jimmy Fell, 2011)

Communist holocaust the United States Congress has referred to the mass killings

collectively as "an unprecedented imperial communist holocaust"[18][19]

while the Victims of

Communism Memorial Foundation established by the United States Congress refers to this

subject as the "Communist holocaust".[20]

The term "Red Holocaust" has been used by German

historian Horst Mller;Steven Rosefielde has published a book on this subject titledRed

Holocaust.[21][22]

Proposed causes

List of claims linking communism and mass killings

Theories, such as those of R. J. Rummel, that propose communism as a significant causative factor in

mass killings have attracted scholarly dispute;[23]

this article does not discuss academic acceptance of

such theories.

Klas-Gran Karlsson writes that "Ideologies are systems of ideas, which cannot commit crimes

independently. However, individuals, collectives and states that have defined themselves as

communist have committed crimes in the name of communist ideology, or without naming communism

as the direct source of motivation for their crimes."[24]

According to Rudolph Joseph Rummel, the killings done by communist regimes can be explained with

the marriage between absolute power and an absolutist ideologyMarxism.[25]

"Of all religions, secular and otherwise," Rummel positions Marxism as "by far the bloodiest bloodier

than the Catholic Inquisition, the various Catholic crusades, and the Thirty Years Warbetween

Catholics and Protestants. In practice, Marxism has meant bloody terrorism, deadly purges, lethal

prison camps and murderous forced labor, fatal deportations, man-made famines, extrajudicial

executions and fraudulent show trials, outright mass murder and genocide."[26]

He writes that in

practice the Marxists saw the construction of their utopia as "a war on poverty, exploitation,

imperialism and inequality and, as in a real war, noncombatants would unfortunately get caught in

the battle. There would be necessary enemy casualties: the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, 'wreckers',intellectuals, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, the rich and landlords. As in a war, millions

might die, but these deaths would be justified by the end, as in the defeat of Hitler in World War II. To

the ruling Marxists, the goal of a communist utopia was enough to justify all the deaths."[26]

In his bookRed Holocaust, Steven Rosefielde argues that communism's internal contradictions

"caused to be killed" approximately 60 million people and perhaps tens of millions more, and that this

"Red Holocaust" the peacetime mass killings and other related crimes against humanity perpetrated

by Communist leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot

should be the centerpiece of any net assessment of communism. He states that the aforementioned

leaders are "collectively guilty of holocaust-scale felonious homicides."[27]
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iki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-Rosefielde-21http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Holocaust_(2009_book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Holocaust_(2009_book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Rosefieldehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_M%C3%B6llerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-20http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Communism_Memorial_Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Communism_Memorial_Foundationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-18http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-18http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congresshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-17http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Koreahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Koreahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China


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Robert Conquest stressed that Stalin's purges were not contrary to the principles ofLeninism, but

rather a natural consequence of the system established by Vladimir Lenin, who personally ordered the

killing of local groups of class enemy hostages.[28]

Alexander Yakovlev, architect

ofperestroika and glasnost and later head of the Presidential Commission for the Victims of Political

Repression, elaborates on this point, stating that "The truth is that in punitive operations Stalin did not

think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps,

and all the rest."[29]

Historian Robert Gellately concurs, saying: "To put it another way, Stalin initiated

very little that Lenin had not already introduced or previewed."[30]

Said Lenin to his colleagues in the

Bolshevik government: "If we are not ready to shoot a saboteur and White Guardist, what sort of

revolution is that?"[31]

Anne Applebaum asserts that, "without exception, the Leninist belief in the one-party state was and is

characteristic of every communist regime," and "the Bolshevik use of violence was repeated in every

Communist revolution." Phrases said by Lenin and Cheka founderFelix Dzerzhinsky were deployed

all over the world. She notes that as late as 1976,Mengistu Haile Mariam unleashed a "Red Terror" in

Ethiopia.[32]

In The Lost Literature of Socialism, literary historian George G. Watson saw socialism as conservative,

a reaction against liberalism and an attempt to return to antiquity and hierarchy. He states that the

writings ofFriedrich Engels and others show that "the 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."[33]

Watson's claims 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."[34]

Daniel Goldhagen,[35]

Richard Pipes,[36]

and John N. Gray[37]

have written about theories regarding the

role of communism in books for a popular audience.

List of claims relating to a failure in the rule of law or economicconditions as cause

Eric D. Weitz says that the mass killing in communist states are a natural consequence of the failure of

the rule of law, seen commonly during periods of social upheaval in the 20th century. For both

communist and non-communist mass killings, "genocides occurred at moments of extreme social

crisis, often generated by the very policies of the regimes."[38]

They are not inevitable but are political

decisions.[38]

Stephen Hicks ofRockford College ascribes the violence characteristic of twentieth-

century socialist rule to these collectivist regimes' abandonment of protections ofcivil rights and

rejection of the values ofcivil society. Hicks writes that whereas "in practice every liberal capitalist

country has a solid record for being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for

making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives", in socialism "practice has

time and again proved itself more brutal than the worst dictatorships prior to the twentieth century.

Each socialist regime has collapsed into dictatorship and begun killing people on a huge scale."[39]

The Black Book of Communism, a set of academic essays on mass killings under Communist

regimes, details "'crimes, terror, and repression' from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989".[40][not in

citation given][41]Courtois claims an association between communism and criminality"Communist
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pedia.org/wiki/Civil_societyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rightshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockford_Collegehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hickshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-Weitz.2C_251.E2.80.93252-38http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-Weitz.2C_251.E2.80.93252-38http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Grayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Grayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-36http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pipeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-35http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldhagenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-Grant1999Review-34http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-Watson1998Lost_77-33http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engelshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_G._Watsonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-32http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror_(Ethiopia)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengistu_Haile_Mariamhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinskyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevikhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-party_statehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaumhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-31http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-30http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gellatelyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnosthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroikahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Nikolaevich_Yakovlevhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#cite_note-28http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Leninhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conquest


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regimes ... turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government"[42]

and says that this

criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.[43]

Benjamin Valentino writes that mass killings strategies are chosen by Communists to economically

dispossess large numbers of people.[44]

"Social transformations of this speed and magnitude have

been associated with mass killing for two primary reasons. First, the massive social dislocations

produced by such changes have often led to economic collapse, epidemics, and, most important,

widespread famines. ... The second reason that communist regimes bent on the radical transformation

of society have been linked to mass killing is that the revolutionary changes they have pursued have

clashed inexorably with the fundamental interests of large segments of their populations. Few people

have proved willing to accept such far-reaching sacrifices without intense levels of coersion."[45]

Michael Mann writes: "The greatest Communist death rates were not intended but resulted from

gigantic policy mistakes worsened by factionalism, and also somewhat by callous or revengeful views

of the victims."[46]

According to Jacques Semelin, "communist systems emerging in the twentieth century ended up

destroying their own populations, not because they planned to annihilate them as such, but because

they aimed to restructure the 'social body' from top to bottom, even if that meant purging it and

recarving it to suit their new Promethean political imaginaire."[47]

Other claims

Inf luence of national cultures

Martin Malia called Russian exceptionalism and the War Experience general reasons for barbarity.[48]

Secular values

Some proponents of traditional ethical standards and religious faith argue that the killings were at least

partly the result of a weakening of faith and the unleashing of the radical values of the European

Enlightenment upon the modern world. Observing this kind of trend in critical scholarship,

the University of Oklahoma political scientist Allen D. Hertzke zooms in on the ideas of British Catholic

writer and historian Paul Johnson and writes that

[A] shift in intellectual mood has come from the critique of the perceived failures andblinders of the secular project. To be sure, this critique is not universally shared, but a vastscholarship, along with a proliferating array of opinion journals and think tank symposia,

catalog the fallout from the abandonment of transcendent societal anchors. Epitomizing

this thought is Paul Johnson's magisterial book Modern Times, which attacks the common

Enlightenment assumption that less religious faith necessarily equals more human

freedom or democracy. The collapse of the religious impulse among the educated classes

in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, he argues, left a vacuum that was

filled by politicians wielding power under the banner of totalitarian ideologies whether

'blood and soil' Fascism oratheistic Communism. Thus the attempt to live

without God made idols of politics and produced the century's 'gangster statesmen'

Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot whose 'unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind'

unleashed unimaginable horrors. Or as T.S. Eliot puts it, 'If you will not have God (and he

is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.'[49]

Personal responsib i l i ty

The Russian and world history scholar John M. Thompson describes the system of terror developedduring Stalin's time as "puzzling"; surveying Russian history, he posits the height of the killings in the
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Soviet Union in the 1930s as a function of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's personality specifically

contending that

Attempts to explain this nightmarish period as Stalin's consolidation and reshaping ofpower, or the cleansing of the party as an evolving component of the Stalinist systemsomehow run amok, or as Stalin's coldly calculated effort to ready the country for war and

ensure that he would have a free hand in foreign policy are, singly or even taken together,

simply not convincing. Since Stalin destroyed both the records and most of the high

officials involved, we will probably never know precisely what led to the purges and terror.

Rational and policy considerations undoubtedly there were, but any persuasive

explanation of this era must take account of Stalin's personality and outlook. Much of what

occurred only makes sense if it stemmed in part from the disturbed mentality, pathological

cruelty, and extreme paranoia of Stalin himself. Insecure, despite having established a

dictatorship over the party and country, hostile and defensive when confronted with

criticism of the excesses of collectivization and the sacrifices required by high-tempo

industrialization, and deeply suspicious that past, present, and even yet unknown futureopponents were plotting against him, Stalin began to act as a person beleaguered. He

soon struck back at enemies, real or imaginary.[50]

Historian Helen Rappaport describes Nikolay Yezhov, the bureaucrat in charge of the NKVD during

the Great Purge, as a physically diminutive figure of "limited intelligence" and "narrow political

understanding.... Like other instigators of mass murder throughout history, [he] compensated for his

lack of physical stature with a pathological cruelty and the use of brute terror."[51]

Comparison to other mass killings

Daniel Goldhagen argues that 20th century Communist regimes "have killed more people than any

other regime type."[52]

Other scholars in the fields of Communist studies and genocide studies, such

as Steven Rosefielde, Benjamin Valentino, and R.J. Rummel, have come to similar

conclusions.[2][26][53]

Rosefielde states that it is possible the "Red Holocaust" killed more non-

combatants than "Ha Shoah" and "Japan's Asian holocaust" combined, and "was at least as heinous,

given the singularityof Hitler's genocide." Rosefielde also notes that "while it is fashionable to mitigate

the Red Holocaust by observing that capitalism killed millions of colonials in the twentieth century,

primarily through man-made famines, no inventory of such felonious negligent homicides comes close

to the Red Holocaust total."[53]

States where mass killings have occurred

Soviet Union

After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives became available, containing

official records of the execution of approximately 800,000 prisoners under Stalin for either political or

criminal offenses, around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulags and some 390,000 deaths during

kulak forced resettlement for a total of about 3 million officially recorded victims in these

categories.[54]

Estimates on the number of deaths brought about by Stalin's rule are hotly debated by scholars in the

field ofSoviet and communist studies.[55][56]

The published results vary depending on the time when

the estimate was made, on the criteria and methods used for the estimates, and sources available for

estimates. Some historians attempt to make separate estimates for different periods of the Soviethistory, with casualties for the Stalinist period varying from 8 to 61 million.

[57][full citation needed][58][full citation
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needed][59][full citation needed][60][page needed][61][page needed][62][page needed]Several scholars, among them Stalin

biographerSimon Sebag Montefiore, formerPolitburomemberAlexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev and

the director ofYale's "Annals of Communism" series Jonathan Brent, put the death toll at about 20

million.[63][64][65][66][67][68][69]

Robert Conquest, in the latest revision (2007) of his bookThe Great

Terror, estimates that while exact numbers will never be certain, the communist leaders of the USSR

were responsible for no fewer than 15 million deaths.[70]

According to Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Stalin's regime can be charged with causing the "purposive

deaths" of about a million people, although the number of deaths caused by the regime's "criminal

neglect" and "ruthlessness" was considerably higher, and perhaps exceed Hitler's.[4]

Wheatcroft

excludes all famine deaths as "purposive deaths," and claims those that do qualify fit more closely the

category of "execution" rather than "murder."[4]

However, some of the actions of Stalin's regime, not

only those during the Holodomorbut also Dekulakization and targeted campaigns against particular

ethnic groups, can be considered as genocide,[71]

[72]

at least in its loose definition.[73]

Genocide scholarAdam Jones claims that "there is very little in the record of human experience to

match the violence unleashed between 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power, and 1953, whenJoseph Stalin died and the Soviet Union moved to adopt a more restrained and largely non-murderous

domestic policy." He notes the exceptions being the Khmer Rouge (in relative terms) and Mao's rule in

China (in absolute terms).[74]

Red Terror

Main articles: Red Terror, Decossackization, andLenin's Hanging Order

During the Russian Civil War, both sides unleashed terror campaigns (the Red and White Terrors).

The Red Terror culminated in the summary execution of tens of thousands of"enemies of the people"

by the political police, the Cheka.[75][copyright violation?][volume & issue needed][76][77][78]

Many victims were

'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness forsummary execution in reprisal for anyalleged counter-revolutionary provocation.

[79]Many were put to death during and after the suppression

of revolts, such as theKronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. ProfessorDonald Rayfield claims

that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of

thousands of executions."[80]

A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.[81][82]

The policy of decossackization amounted to an attempt by Soviet leaders to "eliminate, exterminate,

and deport the population of a whole territory," according to Nicolas Werth.[83]

In the early months of

1919, some 10,000 to 12,000 Cossacks were executed[84][85][verification needed]

and many more deported

after their villages were razed to the ground.[86]

Great Purg e (Yezhov shc hina)

Main article: Great Purge

Stalin's attempts to solidify his position as leader of the Soviet Union lead to an escalation in

detentions and executions of various people, climaxing in 193738 (a period sometimes referred to as

the "Yezhovshchina," orYezhov era), and continuing until Stalin's death in 1953. Around 700,000 of

these were executed by a gunshot to the back of the head,[87]

others perished from beatings and

torture while in "investigative custody"[88]

and in the Gulag due to starvation, disease, exposure and

overwork.[89]

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. In the

cases investigated by the State Security Department of the NKVD (GUGB NKVD) October 1936

November 1938, at least 1,710,000 people were arrested and 724,000 people executed.[90]
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2nd motion

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